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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
Loaned by a friend as I embark to Ireland next week. Sure hope I don't wind up in the Ireland presented in these pages, though. I kept finding myself trying to dismiss these stories as one-note at the outset, but I stuck with them. Glad I did, because the conclusion to every last one hit me like an emotional ton of bricks (even when I was left wondering what the hell I just read). Barrett has such a great voice and way of compiling these poetic mini-scenes into cohesive stories. Great stuff.
A pretty exciting collection of crimey-grimy short stories set in small town Ireland. We've got a lot of folks who won't ever go to college because it's not on their horizon, sometimes working alongside the college bound and sometimes not. They drink a lot and have kids their relationships can't handle; they shoot guns and sometimes deal dope, and make a habit of staying out way too late.
Barrett writes really lovely sentences, in a restrained, clean kind of way, though none of the stories comes near to the sheer lyric verve of the first story here.
Lots to like, but I'd also like to see him try some people slightly further outside his milieu.... There's a moment in "Calm around horses," when rolls of useless Irish pounds turn up, that felt like a treasure trove of other people and concerns, and maybe I'd like to read some stories in that world, too.
Barrett writes really lovely sentences, in a restrained, clean kind of way, though none of the stories comes near to the sheer lyric verve of the first story here.
Lots to like, but I'd also like to see him try some people slightly further outside his milieu.... There's a moment in "Calm around horses," when rolls of useless Irish pounds turn up, that felt like a treasure trove of other people and concerns, and maybe I'd like to read some stories in that world, too.
Uitermate onder de indruk van deze kortverhalen en alvast zeer nieuwsgierig naar zijn eerste roman!
This is more than just another collection of Irish stories about endlessly getting drunk!
Anyone who grew up, as I did, in a God-forsaken provincial town in Ireland where there isn't much to do except get drunk and where sex, if it ever happens at all, is a squalid, unpleasant, guilty affair, will feel uncomfortably back home, reading these deeply absorbing stories, some of which are very short and some long enough to be called novellas. Colin Barrett plays with language very skilfully: his "Diamonds" begins like a delightful half-parody of Raymond Chandler before settling into a strange, hopeless tale of chaotically large families, illegitimate, unwell chldren, and futile murder. Barrett loves language and can write with great lyricism and playfulness; his ability to describe a face or a person, or a river at night, or a squalid unsuccessful pub, or somebody's Adam's apple, will hold you spellbound and fascinated, but sometimes all of this hopeless pathos, this ultimately barren drinking and kicking, describes an Ireland that feels like the dog-end of a Europe that's come to an end here, petering out until it's washed away in the ocean. You wonder if that's all there is, in those towns; but I find this world of working-class young Irishmen and Irish women, out on an alienated edge where whatever's happening in the world is happening somewhere else, far more gratifying and gutsy than the work of certain other effete Dublin writers. I expect and hope for more from Mr. Barrett.
Anyone who grew up, as I did, in a God-forsaken provincial town in Ireland where there isn't much to do except get drunk and where sex, if it ever happens at all, is a squalid, unpleasant, guilty affair, will feel uncomfortably back home, reading these deeply absorbing stories, some of which are very short and some long enough to be called novellas. Colin Barrett plays with language very skilfully: his "Diamonds" begins like a delightful half-parody of Raymond Chandler before settling into a strange, hopeless tale of chaotically large families, illegitimate, unwell chldren, and futile murder. Barrett loves language and can write with great lyricism and playfulness; his ability to describe a face or a person, or a river at night, or a squalid unsuccessful pub, or somebody's Adam's apple, will hold you spellbound and fascinated, but sometimes all of this hopeless pathos, this ultimately barren drinking and kicking, describes an Ireland that feels like the dog-end of a Europe that's come to an end here, petering out until it's washed away in the ocean. You wonder if that's all there is, in those towns; but I find this world of working-class young Irishmen and Irish women, out on an alienated edge where whatever's happening in the world is happening somewhere else, far more gratifying and gutsy than the work of certain other effete Dublin writers. I expect and hope for more from Mr. Barrett.
dark
Colin Barrett knows exactly what to do with short form fiction. His writing has an electric energy and his characters are perfectly drawn. This is a strong collection.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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 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.
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 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.
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated