Few and Far Between

About this book

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by LitHub , The Millions , and Our Culture From a “deeply talented” ( The New York Times Book Review ), award-winning writer comes an alternate history of Northern Ireland’s recent past where the last remaining residents of a haunted archipelago face imminent eviction from their home. In 1958, a politician’s ludicrous proposal to create a seventh county for Northern Ireland by draining Lough Neagh—the largest lake in Ireland—was, quite understandably, never implemented. In Few and Far Between , Jan Carson imagines a timeline in which the scheme proceeded. When an archipelago emerges from the receding water, a utopian community establishes itself on the islands, hoping to escape the prejudices and dangers of Troubles-era Northern Ireland. As children in the 1970s, Marion and Robert-John Connolly moved to “The Ark” with their mercurial father, a prominent anthropologist studying this unique community. When the novel opens in 2017, the siblings are among the final few inhabitants. Sheltered from modernity, they work as the Ark’s caretakers, monitoring the mysterious Far Side islands where ghostly figures linger and the land swallows secrets whole…