Róisín Ingle

So it's about Lough Neagh, actually.

Lough Neagh is the big character.

There was this scheme back in the 50s where Terence O'Neill, the politician, had this madcap scheme to drain Lough Neagh and then this archipelago of islands was going to appear and

So Jan kind of imagines if that harebrained scheme had actually happened, and then there are these islands, and they become a kind of home for a lot of misfits around Northern Ireland, people who don't want to live in troubles in Northern Ireland.

They kind of escape to these islands.

And it's the story of this anthropologist who brings his whole family there to study the area.

So there's all these different islands, some of which are very strange and strange things happen on them.

That's the magic realism.

So there's an island where people go to end their lives.

And there's another island where there's often the spectral kind of ghosts who are sort of the half dead peer.

There's another island where there's these women called the sleepers.

And it kind of represents women who've been very traumatized and they fall asleep and

they don't wake up because of the trauma.

So they get put on this island.

Now that all sounds a bit, I know it sounds a bit mad, but the way John Carson sort of explores it isn't mad.

And it kind of becomes this metaphor, I suppose, for a lot of what's went on in Northern Ireland.

And meanwhile, there's this brother and sister who are left on the island, Robert, John and Marion are their names.

And they kind of,

don't like each other and they have to put up with each other.

And they're kind of like, you know, a rural farming brother, you know, people who get left in these houses and they kind of have to put up with each other and that relationship.