The Raptures is Jan Carson’s most autobiographical novel, dealing with a child raised in an evangelical Christian community in 1990s Northern Ireland – which mirrors her own background.

In her book, a class of children from the same village fall prey to a mysterious and deadly epidemic. Only one pupil seems to be avoiding the effects of the disease: Hannah, a girl from a born-again Christian background.

“There is a lot of me in this book and for that reason it was both very easy to write because I know this world very well, there wasn’t a lot of research to do, but quite difficult to write – to go to the hard places,” Jan tells podcast host Martina Devlin.

“It’s very easy to pastiche this world. It’s much more difficult to have a nuanced look at it.” She was sheltered from the Troubles, but in hindsight wishes she'd known more about what was happening around her.

In her books, Jan gives readers a strong sense of the Ulster Protestant experience, especially for those from the ‘born again’ community.

“I grew up absolutely immersed in the King James Bible,” she says. “That is not a bad literary document to be immersed in as a writer. It’s got everything from poetry and prophecy to magical realism and beautiful, beautiful language. I’m very glad for those things.”

More here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/437833/the-raptures-by-carson-jan/9780857525758

“I really don't like the fact that sometimes I'm referred to as kind of a controversial novelist because I don't feel that I am,” says John Boyne, whose novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has sold 11 million copies and mounting, and has been reimagined as a film, play, ballet and opera.

The sequel – All The Broken Places – imagines life after the Holocaust for some of the characters in the 2006 novel, which saw life in a concentration camp through the eyes of two small boys. 

“I'm not controversial as a person,” he says. “I'm not a provocateur at all as a person. And I certainly don't mean to come across that way either in the books that I write or in my interviews.

“I'm not immune to the fact people have criticised The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in more recent years – not for the first 14 or so years of its publication. And I'm not immune to the fact that there's a vocal amount of people who feel I should never be writing a book like All The Broken Places. But I also feel what can we do as writers but write the book that feels right to us at the time?"

He says The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has become “almost a touchstone” for people who feel negativity towards him. But with any writing project, he feels the fear and does it anyway.

All The Broken Places is published by Penguin Random House. More here https://johnboyne.com/book/all-the-broken-places/

Andrew Meehan is nailing his colours to the mast. He writes love stories, he says – although it took him until his third and most recent novel to recognise it.

It was only as he was working on his latest novel, Instant Fires, that realisation dawned.

“Halfway through I discovered, ‘Andrew, you write love stories. OK, it took you a while to cop on to the fact it’s what you do’.” Looking back, he understands that all three of his novels are love stories.

“You write what you want to read,” concludes Andrew. “We all get put in boxes and some of us invite ourselves into certain boxes and I’m now embracing the fact that I’m a writer of love stories.“

The novel is about two strangers who meet over the course of a week in Heidelberg, Germany, and feel an instant attraction – despite the woman, Ute, being convinced love is not for her. Their courtship is  “diffident, gentle, awkward” and is characterised as a prelude to love by Andrew’s publisher.

 Instant Fires by Andrew Meehan is published by New Island. More here:  https://www.newisland.ie/fiction/instant-fires