Review: The Raptures by Jan Carson
I didn’t really know what to expect from this book but the synopsis sounded amazing. I’m delighted that I was approved for it because I literally couldn’t put it down until it was done.
It’s 1993 in Ballylack, Northern Ireland and 10-year-old Hannah Adger is looking forward to the summer holidays. But then her classmates start to fall ill and before anyone knows what’s happening, they start dying. No one knows what this strange plague is or how it arrived in Ballylack but it seems that Hannah has avoided it. Racked with guilt as to why, Hannah plunges into crippling loneliness and confusion as the community pulls together to solve the mystery and stop the children from dying.
Hannah is raised in a time and place where girls aren’t expected to have high-flying careers or to be intelligent. She and her family are ultra-religious and her views are completely influenced by what the church teaches her. Of course, I wanted to tell her that she was destined for things much bigger than Christianity would ever allow her to think about. At first, her parents’ devoutness seems to be what saves her and there is a whiff of holiness that seems to linger around Hannah. This gave the whole novel an allegorical vibe and it meant I was making connections to Biblical material all over the place.
There is some reference of what was going on in Northern Ireland in the 90s but it’s through Hannah’s eyes. Therefore, we get an view that is full of innocence and a unique take on terrorism that only a sheltered child could have. It endeared me to her even more and I couldn’t help but put all my hope into her being OK.
There is also mention of the racism and xenophobia in a small Irish village in 1993. Maganda is a Filipina woman who has married an Irish man and settled in Ballylack. Her son Ben is actually called Bayani but like many things, his name has been forced to fit in with their community. The theme of othering and the treatment of migrants is touched upon at multiple points in the narrative and it says a lot about the hostile nature and rigid attitudes of Ballylack. It’s almost as if an ugly plague has been there for years and a physical manifestation of it is long overdue.
There is some discussion of class issues too. Hannah is just a child but she is well aware of the class system within Northern Ireland. When a rich city kid wins the essay competition themed around the future of Ireland, she realises that the circumstances that she was born into already mean the odds are stacked against her. It’s a heartbreaking thought that kids as young as she is have very little hope for their lives but sadly, we know that this is a reality amongst working class children.
Despite its very bleak content, The Raptures does have its moments of humour. Any book that is largely told through the eyes of a child is bound to make an adult reader laugh sometimes and Hannah did that for me. It was a really lovely experience to watch her grapple with the idiosyncrasies of her faith and question the so-called ‘rules’. These lighter parts were very much needed in a book that is largely about mass child death.
As her classmates die, their spirits visit Hannah and she gets to talk to each of them one last time. They all seem to have aged a few years and have come to a few realisations of their own. It’s almost as if death is a gateway to a kind of adulthood for them and it has given them some wisdom. Through them, Hannah learns that even in the afterlife, there is still conflict and division. Perhaps wherever there is an essence of human thought, those things will always be unavoidable.
The Raptures is a wonderful time capsule of a novel. Of course, the fact that a deadly plague is at its centre may mean that it’s a little too soon for some people to pick up right away. However, Carson has done an amazing job of writing a believable, loveable child protagonist and conjured up a vivid picture of Ballylack during a time of political turbulence. It’s a heartwrenching page-turner that may well have you howling and screaming!
