IN THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG by Lisa Carey, Morrow, 290 pages, $24.

Lisa Carey has written a delightful fantasy in “In the Country of the Young” – and it’s also a romance with plenty of suspense. What distinguishes it though isn’t the romance, suspense or plot, but rather the lyrical writing which builds scene-by-scene in this second novel by the young New England writer.

The soaring, descriptive writing is certainly the best seen in the last quarter-century.

The story is set in a small island off the Maine coast, but also has an Irish background that is woven into the magical tale. There are two principal characters – Oisin MacDara, a 30-something artist who lives a hermitlike existence on the island of Tiranogue, and Aisling, a ghost-child who died at the end of a voyage from Ireland to Tiranogue.

Aisling, we are told, is “a beautiful, whispery name. Vision, it meant in the Irish, or dream.” She sees herself as a “wee fairy round an oak tree. He [her brother, Darragh] was the only person she belonged to. He was good; he took her because she was unwanted. She accepted this long before it began to hurt her, because it was all she had, this image of herself, a small brightness circling the dark, solid trunk of her brother.”

The novel opens with the 1848 voyage of some 150 Irish immigrants on a ship – Tir na nOg, an Irish name for a mythical land called “The Country of the Young.” The vessel founders in a storm off the island. One of the survivors, who dies when she reaches land is the 7-year-old Aisling.

One hundred years later, the ghost-child – cheated by her death

of the chance to grow up – returns to Tiranogue and takes to the artist’s cabin. Oisin, who has “second sight,” notes the manifestations of the invisible girl who slowly comes to trust him and becomes visible.

Now the novel alternates flashbacks and we see Oisin as a child with his twin-sister Nieve and Aisling as a child with her brother Darragh. We learn how close each brother-sister duo was and how each pair lost a member. While following the development of the two main characters, we also follow Aisling’s growth from a child to a 20-year-old woman in “four short seasons.”

The flashbacks and dialogue within the chapters carry luminous if sad tableaus of the characters so young. In one scene, Darragh tries to explain death to his younger sister:

“It’s the same as day turning to night. Your life is like the day, and after death comes, it’s all different – not worse or better, just different – because, as at night, the world no longer looks the same. It’s why twilight is the holy time, when day and night come together, and the living and the dead can meet one another on the road.”

Oisin, too, is pictured for us first as a youth, “awkward enough to attract sympathetic sighs from adults. His hair was a shocking orange, and it was uncontrollable, a field of brittle cowlicks. In the sun he often burned violently and was left with large, irregular-shaped freckles. He was allergic to sleep; the sandman’s morning crust refused to release from his eyelids and left them swollen, raw, and slightly sticky at times. Because of this, the peculiar and striking blue of his eyes was rarely noticed.”

The author neatly weaves in bits and pieces of Irish lore as the story unfolds.

One early scene has Nieve asking Oisin to tell the story their grandfather recited about their names:

“There is a land under the sea … It is called Tir na nOg, the Country of the Young, because age and death have not found it. Only one man who has gone there has ever returned, and that man is Oisin, leader of the tribe of the Fianna.”

She continues the story of a time when “magic was everywhere and men lived with nature,” a time of horses and hounds, hunting and playing chess, when they were happy, brave and content.

The grandfather’s story continues: “One day, when Oisin and his comrades were riding along the shore, they came upon the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, riding bareback on a gleaming white horse. The woman had gold hair and lips like sweet red wine. She wore a dark cloak of silk that was covered in red and gold stars, and a crown of rubies nestled in her curls.

“‘I am Nieve Chinn Oir,’ she told them, which means ‘Nieve of the Golden Head.’

“‘I am in love with you, Oisin, and wish to take you to Tir na nOg, where my father is king, where you will never grow old or discouraged, and where no one ever dies.'”

The story tells that the two went to live in Tir na nOg and did so for 300 years, until Oisin went back to Ireland for a visit, suddenly became old and was found by Saint. Patrick.

Carey is equally at home describing their lives in Ireland at the time of the potato famine and how the young children – Aisling and Darragh – sailed for America. And we learn to understand why the artist, Oisin, lives a hermitlike existence and mourns his twin sister.

But it is the growing love of Oisin and Aisling, as she matures, which carries the suspense of the novel. It seems preordained that she will one day return to her earlier existence and then, what will happen to the artist?

Lisa Carey is a major talent with brilliantly luminescent writing. Rarely today do we find new writers who can craft characters, scenes and settings with such a beautiful touch. The genre may be fantasy but the creation is magical.