Quickly, While They Still Have Horses
Quickly, While They Still Have Horses: Stories by Jan Carson
i am really getting into this little microgenre of connected surreal short stories/vignettes/narratives. Craft was so excellent, and Rakesfall broke my brain in great ways, and Tauhou was so dreamlike and encompassing. Quickly falls right into this tiny category for me, more on the short story end of things than the others but still feeling like it's creating a world that looks like some part of ours, with just the smallest unreal quirks.
the connective tissue here is the political and social landscape of Northern Ireland, and the shadow of the Troubles across stories that span time, borders, boundaries, and peace lines. the emotional logic of the surreal elements—a severed hand that keeps reappearing in a fridge in Ulster, a Catholic ghost haunting a used car bought by Protestants, miracle healing offered and joked about and achieved—hits just right in a setting haunted by violence and division and getting on with life in spite of those things. if a bomb could go off anywhere, any moment, and a fenced wall divides that sort's neighborhood from this sort's, then why couldn't a pillar of heatless fire and smoke be a mental health support device? even the stories that aren't explicitly surreal deal little electric shocks of surprise, highlighting grief or numbness or resilience or love within the mundane everyday.
for half a minute i thought about picking a favorite story to highlight in this review, but looking through them i don't think i can! each one was so sparkling and funny and breathtaking like a punch in the chest. i have endearing love for a woman who admires her lesbian sisters-in-law and does her best to support her soft-spoken husband. i laughed so hard at the adolescent impulsivity and shitheadedness of kids who threw a burning baby doll over the peace wall. i can't stop thinking about the boy who chooses to believe his blind friend when he says he's been healed and wants to learn to drive, and the girl who spends all summer working for a space of her own and is denied by a father who must be recontextualized in that moment between childhood and growing up. what a treasure trove of jewels.
the deets
how i read it: another e-galley from NetGalley, i'm still playing catch-up! but i'm definitely going to buy this one when i have the chance.
try this if you: are delighted by dialects written out, are into surreality, enjoy stellar and quick character development, or dig getting dropped into the day-to-day culture of a place.
some lines i really liked: gosh the prose is just so beautiful
At high tide the seaweed swims with me. Its smooth tongues lap my arms and legs. I think about Jonah in the belly of the whale, all those slick intestines sliding against his skin. I feel small in myself and held.
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In a way, it's good to be kept busy. It wears the howl out of her. She wonders if it is the same for Dad. By the day's end, there's no talk left in either of them.
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After Rob, I lost the sea. I let Malcolm have it. I did not want it anymore.
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The pair of them are always getting on like this. Smiling. Touching. Kissing each other in unusual places such as shoulders and earlobes. They are stupid happy. I wouldn't want to be a lesbian myself, but I envy Cathy all the same.
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You start being honest with each other, and it's like opening what's-her-name's box. You never know what'll come slinking out.
pub date: July 9, 2024! go get it and read it!!










