Colin Barrett (2) (1982–)

“He was touching forty but looked ten years older again, with a face on him like a vandalized church, long and angular and pitted, eyes glinting deep in their sockets like smashed-out windows.”

I really enjoyed Young Skins: Stories from this young Irish author and he returns here with his first novel, set in a small town in west Ireland. It also focuses on the working class, along with the drug-dealers and thugs that hang on like parasites. A teenage boy is kidnapped, in revenge of a show more large unpaid debt and things spiral down from there. The writing is lean but robust and unflinching, with nicely drawn characters. An author to keep an eye on. show less

A collection of short stories set in a fictional small town in Co. Mayo, where the Celtic Tiger's been and gone and hardly affected the lives of Colin Barrett's cast of characters, who work mostly dead-end jobs and lead dead-end lives.

I found Young Skins a bit of a frustrating reading experience. Barrett can turn a phrase when he wants to, and I could easily visualise Glenbeigh in my mind's eye I was reading: the drab council estates, the clatter of pubs, the petrol station with its seedy show more bathroom.

But this also felt very much like what it is: the first collection of short stories by a guy with an MFA in Creative Writing. Not a lot of variation in tone or voice, no sense of any interest in women's internal lives, some descriptive passages that were laboriously overworked (Please, Colin Barrett, take a break from writing about clouds). And while the dialogue has the vocabulary of rural Ireland down, the syntax was often off—too stagey—and the internal monologues often sound less "working-class GAA-playing guy who scraped a few passes in the Leaving" and more, well... guy with an MFA from UCD. (e.g. "He found me a sinecure as groundskeeper [...] He had seen a talent burgeon under his institution's aegis, and did not want to think it truly snuffed out." Another character thinks of himself as a golem made out of the Connemara dirt and while it's an arresting image, and while I'm not saying no Irish person knows what a golem is, I don't think it's, shall we say, part of the Irish cultural imaginary enough that it's going to be a go-to reference.)

There's enough promise here that I'll give Barrett's work another go—I'm curious about his splashy recent novel—but taken as itself I think Young Skins is a bit over-praised. show less

A sad and character-rich slice of life in a downmarket Irish town. Most people won't make it out of this poor village, and they know it, which makes them desperate. Dev is a giant of a man who nevertheless has been tormented by bullies until he cannot function in the usual world of work and pub life. When dubious cousins use his out of the way house as a hide-out, he has little to say. Nicky is aiming at escape by way of university, and may get there. Doll is trying to avoid the criminal show more life of his older brother. This is not a fast book, although it is easy to read, but when you are finished you know these people well. show less

Colin Barrett takes his time telling a story. There’s no rush, no pressure, no showy technique. Just a darn good story that says what it has to and then shuts down. Now some of these you want to go on longer, some feel like the first chapters of novels. The characters are people you could settle in with, they could carry a longer tale. The first and last, A Shooting in Rathreedane, and The 10, both have that feel. And actually a couple of others now that I think about it.

Most of the show more characters are good people doing the best they can under the circumstances given them. Most of the stories are set in Ireland, one in Canada. There’s humor inherent in them, often black humor. In The Alps, a young man hides from his brothers in a pub after he kills their mother’s cat with a sword, or a katana as he informs the patrons. He brings the katana with him. In another, a poet makes his real living creating pornographic art to his client’s specifications. This is a fine collection. show less