by Jan Carson
First published 2017
In Jan Carson's inventive collection, each story begins on a postcard—a physical constraint that transforms narrative possibilities. These micro-fictions emerge from Belfast's neighborhoods, capturing moments both strange and mundane: a child who speaks only in weather patterns, an elderly woman who collects other people's lost gloves, a street where everyone suddenly stops moving. Carson crafts compressed worlds where the ordinary tilts sideways, revealing unexpected emotional landscapes. Each postcard becomes a window into a precise instant of human complexity, where the boundaries between real and surreal blur with delicate precision. Some stories stretch just a paragraph, others expand into miniature universes, but each maintains a razor-sharp focus on human peculiarity.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: magical-realism, vignettes
Setting: Belfast
Period: 21st-century
80 pages · Paperback · Emma Press