Abstract
Contemporary Northern Irish writers continue to address in their work the legacy of the Troubles as well as its relation to current political, cultural, and everyday life in the province. Whether set in the present or in the past, recent texts appear to still grapple with the topics of communal and individual memory of the conflict and the aftermath of the events in the 20th century (and before) and the division in the communities is still very much present in the local literary depictions.
One of these novels is Jan Carson's recent text, The Raptures (2021). Set in a small border town in Northern Ireland in 1993, it focuses on a small community and its reaction as a mysterious plague seems to sweep through town and affect only children. Although the Northern Irish conflict is mentioned directly in the narrative mostly in passing and the connection to it appears indirect, there is an obvious analogy between the town and the larger province as the future generation of the local community and by extension of the province seems to disappear.
The paper proposes to look at the novel's portrayal of its community; at the relationships between the parents and the children and at how the unfortunate death of the children is viewed by the locals as well as outsiders. How does the novel portray its young generation and the future of the region and on the other hand, to what extent is the local community defined by its past? How is death and violence viewed by the characters in the text? By looking at these aspects of the novel, the paper aims discuss more general tendencies of this as well as other contemporary Northern Irish novels when portraying conflict 25 years after its official end.