Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I had heard a lot about this book so was delighted to be approved for it. Unfortunately despite trying to get into this book on several occasions I really did struggle with it, I finally managed to finish it but sad,y it wasn’t for me.

You know sometimes you finish a book and just think: WOW? The sort of book that casts a shivering, glittering spell over you? The sort you feel right in your bones? The sort you’re so consumed by that you literally can’t look away in the last chapters? The Fire Starters is that book.

I’d put off reading The Fire Starters as I wasn’t sure I’d like it, but ended up loving it. It’s set in East Belfast and evokes the feel of that area with accuracy and warmth. Lots of the two interwoven plots are fantastical - siren type women, children who can fly etc which juxtapose brilliantly with the realistic depiction of post-Troubles Belfast. There’s lots of humour balanced with powerful portrayals of parenthood, marriage and otherness.

The one thing I didn’t like was the lack of accuracy in some parts of the plot which seemed as if they should have been realistic, particularly the presentation of life/work in a GP surgery. This jarred every time it happened as otherwise I thought the writer did a great job combining realistic writing with more fantastical/magic realism elements.

Jan Carson’s The Fire Starters examines fatherhood in a really interesting way. The novel follows two separate narrative strands – both set in East Belfast but one is a realistic look at criminal elements and the other is a fantastical tale involving children with supernatural abilities. These two stories occasionally connect, only to glance off each other like billiard balls, remaining mostly self-contained. It’s a very odd juxtaposition but one which surprisingly works well.

Each story follows a father who fears his child, believing them to be powerful, malevolent and destructive. In one, Sammy believes his twenty-something son is the anonymous Fire Starter, a rogue individual who has attracted a large online following, and is inciting them to commit a series of devastating arsons known as the Tall Fires throughout the city. In the other, single dad Jonathan is convinced that his infant daughter is a mythological creature, with the potential to do great harm; he discovers a support group for parents of similarly afflicted kids with a range of bizarre abilities. These two men’s lives seem worlds apart, but each is grappling with similar fears & anxieties, questions of heredity, and how best to love their monstrous children.

Jonathan’s fear of his baby daughter manifests in strange ways but his emotional (and sleep-deprived) state is believable. By embodying parental worries in a fantastical conceit, Carson allows us to look at them aslant, and by juxtaposing a separate, completely realistic storyline, drives the point home further still. Parenthood is weird and causes grown adults to behave in ways that are hardly rational sometimes. Newborn babies are such strange and wondrous creatures, they might well seem to us like mythological beings. A world that was safe and comfortable becomes suddenly menacing and full of dangers once you have a tiny human to protect.

The other aspect of this novel that worked really well for me is Carson’s prose. There are some terrific zoomed-out descriptions of Belfast and its inhabitants, and of the fires cutting a swathe through the city. These are so vivid and brilliantly done, I just had to stop and read them over again. Its hybrid nature makes this a tricky book to recommend, but if you are open to something a bit different, do give it a go. 4 stars.

I really enjoyed this book although I was hesitant at the start. I liked the character of Jonathan and enjoyed the descriptions of Belfast.
When I read that there was magical realism I was slightly put off but in the end I enjoyed it and it really added to the story.
This book was very enjoyable and I would recommend it.

The Fire Starters by Jan Carson is about the nature of fatherhood and paternal love. It focuses on two men worried about their children and what they might be capable of.

This book, given the very recent events in Derry, feels very of its time. It highlights a Northern Ireland plagued by sectarian divisions, mixing cultural, parental issues with a more magical, and odd perspective to create a story that feels very unique yet strangely familiar.

At the heart, this is story of fathers and children. How we raise them, how we teach them about the world around us, and what it means to have a child who is ‘different’. The main characters are Sammy and Jonathan. Sammy has an adult son and a history steeped in the Troubles. He’s constantly trying to hide the anger that sits within himself, and at the same time worries that his son may have inherited that anger. Jonathan is a single parent to a newborn baby girl, incredibly standoffish and condescending to his patients as their GP. One of his patients is Sammy. As the story unfolds, we see how the lives of these two men intertwine around their growing concerns for their children, and we catch a glimpse of a wider secular community of ‘gifted’ children.

I really enjoyed the sections told from Jonathan’s perspective, and found him so irritating yet loveable at the same time. His obvious discomfort around all of his patients, and his ineptitude at understanding feelings and emotions was both hilarious and sad. His further inability to communicate properly with anyone, linked to his father unloved past, made him very endearing to me. Sammy I was less enthralled by, although I did find the sections with his wife quite touching. The writing is able to capture that feeling of solidarity and deep seated friendship in life-long couples very well.

I liked the many references to Northern Ireland and The Troubles. It felt like the author really understood and felt the pain, anger and struggles of this time. It’s also like a little love letter to the country, and the many descriptions of the area made me feel like I was there, with the characters. It felt very believable and real.

The writing is odd at times, taking on an almost stream of conscious type approach that can be difficult to get a handle on. At certain points I struggled with the flow, and had to reread large sections of the text to truly understand what was being said. The plot and pacing is also a little all over the place. This isn’t an action packed read. It unfolds slowly, and is heavily character driven, and if that isn’t really your thing you’re never going to enjoy this. It feels very cerebral, and not much happens other than lots of talking for quite some time.

A sometimes quiet book, that’s a little odd and a lot strange but with a big heart for characters and Northern Ireland

We have here loosely connected stories of two fathers. Lonely, socially awkward Jonathan is left alone to bring up his baby daughter, the first time he has had responsibility for anyone other than himself. He is afraid for her, for what havoc she might be capable of wreaking, not least on him. Sammy had a history of violence during the ‘Troubles’ before he moved his young family to a quieter part of town but he fears that his eldest son has not only inherited his nature but plans worse and more calculated acts of mayhem. Things come to a head during a long, hot, dry summer, characterised by a series of ‘tall fires’ across the city growing steadily taller and more threatening.

How these two fathers act to protect their children from themselves drives this book, but the story is interspersed with imaginative, fantastical anecdotes about local children with unusual ‘superhuman’ powers and these children and their parents’ reactions to their offspring underline the central theme.

I really enjoyed the author’s vision of a tense and feverish Belfast during this heady summer of heat and fire. I was quite taken with her two main characters too, especially Sammy, the hard man past his prime and beset by an anxiety alien to his former self. Terrific writing, heartily recommended.

What a book! Original, exhilarating, intelligent, surprising, magical, brilliant, captivating – these are just some of the adjectives swirling around the reviews at the moment. And I have to concur. This is a wonderful novel, completely compelling. Set in East Belfast over a long hot summer, in a season of fires and riots, it focuses on two men, two fathers, whose experience of fatherhood comes close to overwhelming them. And that’s all I want to say about the story. Too many reviews, in my opinion, give too much away. This is a book that should be allowed to creep up on the reader, to gradually unfold, to surprise (which it will do) and to intrigue without any preconceptions. Social realism and magical realism seamlessly intertwine as the political background and geographical background simmer away. I couldn’t put it down and was happy to be carried along by some of the stranger elements. A superb read.

I was delighted to get the chance to read The Fire Starters by Jan Carson, out later this month  A dark and really unusual story that kept me guessing to the end - in fact, I could barely read the last couple of pages because I was involuntarily holding a hand over my face to shield my eyes! It is set in East Belfast and is narrated by two troubled fathers: one, who fears his own dark and violent past makes him worry his teenage son is to blame for trouble brewing in the city, and another who fears that his baby is dangerous and not quite human. I did find the book a little odd in places, and at times thought the two stories could have been even stronger if told separately, but it definitely made me think.

I have enjoyed Jan's writing for a long time, and am delighted to see her getting the recognition she deserves, especially as The Fire Starters is her best book so far.

Set in East Belfast and steeped in the class and cultural divides of that corner of the city, Carson blends the bizarre realities of Northern Irish bonfire culture and sense of persecution with the unsettling fantasy of children with strange and terrifying new powers to gripping effect.

The story focuses on two fathers, working class ex-paramilitary Sammy and middle-class outcast Jonathon, who are both struggling with their pasts and their dangerous children. Their stories are interwoven well and their voices are, importantly, distinct and clear.

I really enjoyed The Fire Starters, as a piece of writing and as a story. Perhaps my one criticism is that the opening chapters felt rather info-dump-y about Belfast, a little telling rather than showing, but as I am a Belfast resident it may be that readers from outside of here might read these sections differently.

Northern Irish writer Jan Carson spins a offbeat and beguiling tale set in a East Belfast with its history of sectarianism, where the ghosts and DNA of its past conflicts infiltrates the present. Social realism is blended with the colour and magic of the fantastical in the summer of the tall fires, incendiary sparks that grow, threatening to consume a Belfast with its growing tribe of the rebellious young. They are following and emulating the anonymous young man starting and inciting fires in a YouTube video sound tracked by The Prodigy's The Fire Starter. Sammy Agnew is married to Pam with 3 children, he has a history of being a bad man, a loyalist paramilitary terrorising Catholics with guns and burning their cars. He has tried to escape his violent and brutal past by relocating the family to a better part of Belfast. Dr Jonathan Murray was an unwanted solitary and lonely child, raised by parents who were entirely indifferent to him until they emigrate, intentionally leaving him behind.

A socially awkward Jonathan is unable to sustain relationships or function in social circles. He finds himself bewitched by the siren call of a overweight mermaid, who leaves him upon giving birth to their daughter, Sophie. Jonathan is simultaneously delighted and afraid of his baby daughter who fundamentally shifts the trajectory of his life for the better as he begins to interact more successfully with the outside world. He hires Christine, a deaf nanny for Sophie whilst he frantically tries to enforce a world of silence, terrified of Sophie's potential for death, destruction, madness and mayhem. Sammy recognises his son is a malignant force for evil, a son he deserves, a retribution for his own haunting and bloody past. Jonathan finds some solace in discovering Sophie is not alone as he encounters parents with their own 'unfortunate children' with their own special gifts. A troubled Sammy diminishes under the burden of his love and fear of his son and Jonathon tries to find the best way to address the dangers Sophie is likely to pose, fathers feeling a sense of responsibility to the world to which their children pose untold horrors.

Carson writes a beautifully compelling story of two fathers, their relationship with their children, Sammy's terror of his son, and Jonathan's first real love in his life, his beloved Sophie. The two men connect, seeing each other with a clarity that forges a bond between these two different men over the problematic nature of fatherhood, paternal love and sacrifice. Sections of Belfast's communities are struggling to evolve a new identity, to move on from the wars of the past, racked by fear with the slow disappearance over their familiar world and the symbols over which they had invested so much of themselves. So Belfast burns until prayers are answered with the never ending floods of biblical proportions. This is a brilliant evocation of a Belfast at once recognisable but blurred at the edges with the magical and the fantastical. A superb read that I recommend highly. Many thanks to Random House Transworld for an ARC.

t took me a little while to get on board with the style of The Fire Starters - Barney Norris described it as "fizzing with energy", which about sums it up. The style feels a little stream of consciousness at times too, a little frenetic. But as the novel progresses it becomes evident that this fits the narrative - fires are raging across Belfast faster than they can be put out.

Set in east Belfast the story focuses mostly on two men worried about their children and what they might be capable of: one (Jonathan) who is concerned about his newborn daughter and q\ the other (Sammy) is worried about his adult son.

I'd agree with another quote from the blurb, too - that this is "fiercely original". At times it is grittily real, at others there are magical elements. Recommended!

A fascinating and unusual book, I think you can love or hate it. I love it.
It's a sort of dialogue, a stream of consciousness that brings you to Belfast and tells an interesting story.
The book is engaging, once you get used to the style of storytelling you cannot put it down.
I loved the style of writing, how the characters were written and I think that the author is a good storyteller.
I will surely read other books by this author.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all opinions are mine.

This book will be polarising. Set in Belfast, still a place of political turbulence, it writes as though the narrator is talking directly to another character. You are simply an onlooker, listening in to a story that you're not sure you should. It's a difficult style to get along with and I struggled to really immerse myself in the story because of this. Whilst I think it is very unique and will have an audience somewhere, my interest waned as I read. Unfortunately, this book was not for me.

Absolutely loved The Fire Starters. Maybe it was all the references to Connswater Tesco where I used to do my shopping (though it was better when it was still Stewarts).

This is a comic novel set in the heart of loyalist East Belfast. Sammy Agnew is a decommissioned paramilitary trying to cope with civilian life. Jonathan Murray is a GP whose heart is not really in his work. Both share a feeling of irrelevance; both share concerns that their children are growing up to become monsters.

Much of the humour is derived from a deadpan explanation of the cultural mores of the protestant working man. With a straight fact, we are told of the traditions of the Twelfth; the need to assert cultural supremacy over the neighbouring Catholics by the building of immensely tall bonfires; and the injustice of the lack of appreciation for these acts of fealty by the State that they are designed to venerate. And there is Jonathan's first person narrative that sneers at his patients - especially the older and poorer sections of society - as he himself feasts on red wine and pizza.

Then, every now and then, the Sammy and Jonathan narratives will break for a vignette of a child with some extraordinary and esoteric superpower - with some superpowers more useful than others. Being able to turn into a boat, for example, is probably less useful than, say, the ability to fly.

Both Sammy and Jonathan are simultaneously grotesque and loveable. There is a sense that they put on an external act to satisfy others' expectations but underneath there is a genuine human. They feel real.

The novel is also hugely referential. Some references - to popular culture, music, the Anonymous movement, politicians - are quite obvious. Others are more subtle - there's more than a hint, for example, of the NIO Cats In The Cradle advert; or the Midnight's Children superpowers. And then there's this idea of linking prodigy to fire starters... Spotting these references adds enormously to the fun.

The plot as it unfolds is a masterpiece. It leads the reader off to expect some kind of terrorist/police procedural but in fact is a really insightful look at the relationships between parents and children; the aspirations we have for our kids and how we handle things when they don't turn out quite the way we expected; the way we understand their uniqueness in a world where other people's children blur into a single society.

I really cannot find fault in The Fire Starters. I wholeheartedly recommend this novel.

This is set in a Belfast that seems quite recognisable with its sectarian divisions as well as cultural ones. However the book does stray from anything I would associate with normality fairly quickly. The first chapter left me a little puzzled and it was a while before I could get into the story. It is the Summer of the Tall Fires in Belfast and Sammy is concerned about his children. We then meet Jonathan (actually Dr Jonathan Murray a GP) and Sophie, his daughter, and the strangeness of the book begins to develop. It is often dark and down to earth and at times poetic as it follows in the main these two threads that inevitably come together.

Other characters do flit among the pages - a little oddly initially. However Jonathan and Sammy are the main focus of this book. We learn about the lives both current and past. Sammy has a background in the Troubles which is dark but felt authentic to me as did the rest of his story. However it is Jonathan whose story grabbed me and kept me engaged. To call it somewhat bizarre is probably something of an understatement however I felt myself smiling with at times and wincing too. For someone who seems unlikeable he is remarkably likeable!

I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this before. It puts a foot in the fantasy stream in a very effective way. It looks at life in Belfast in an interesting way. I guess to me it is about parenthood in the main and the way your views turn and change over time. I imagine I must be fortunate though probably quite normal to not have had to face what Sammy and Jonathan do. Some time after actually finishing the book I'm still not quite sure what I think and it. However I am glad I read it and it will stay with me for some time to come I'm sure.