In 1998, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed 29 people in the Omagh bombing, only four months after the Good Friday Agreement purported to put an end to the three-decade-long sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Northern Ireland’s history.

During the Troubles, Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists clashed over whether Northern Ireland should remain in the United Kingdom or become part of a united Ireland. The conflict still permeates social and political life in the country, where efforts to confront its legacy are ongoing. In 2024, Northern Ireland established an independent inquiry to determine whether British state authorities could have prevented the carnage of the Omagh bombing. Two years later, the inquiry drags on, impeded by the difficulty of collecting evidence that is over a quarter of a century old, and the pain of dredging up historical grievances.

In 1998, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed 29 people in the Omagh bombing, only four months after the Good Friday Agreement purported to put an end to the three-decade-long sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Northern Ireland’s history.

Few and Far Between: A Novel, Jan Carson, Scribner, 336 pp., $28, July 2026

During the Troubles, Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists clashed over whether Northern Ireland should remain in the United Kingdom or become part of a united Ireland. The conflict still permeates social and political life in the country, where efforts to confront its legacy are ongoing. In 2024, Northern Ireland established an independent inquiry to determine whether British state authorities could have prevented the carnage of the Omagh bombing. Two years later, the inquiry drags on, impeded by the difficulty of collecting evidence that is over a quarter of a century old, and the pain of dredging up historical grievances.

In Northern Irish author Jan Carson’s new novel, Few and Far Between, a young anthropologist named Alex sets out on another mission to examine a messy past when she visits the place where her mixed-religion parents raised her: a fictional island archipelago that once sheltered a utopian community from the Troubles. Through chapters from Alex’s ethnography and the narration of the book’s central characters, Carson explores the dynamics of memory, reconciliation, and accountability that continue to haunt Northern Ireland.

As in her previous work, Carson laces the novel with dark humor and magical realism, wielding absurdity to broach the lingering repercussions of the Troubles alongside the existential threats of our time. Balancing cynicism with charming earnestness, the book grapples with the dangers of melancholy and nostalgia in both personal and political life, prompting readers to consider what we lose when we paper over the past—and what further damage is possible when we drag that past back up again.

A satellite image of the island of Ireland. Lough Neagh is seen at upper right in Northern Ireland. Planet Observer/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Few and Far Between imagines an alternate history in which an outlandish idea proposed in 1958 by Northern Irish leader Terence O’Neill to drain Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British isles,........

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