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wortknistern 's review for:
Young Skins
by Colin Barrett
i read this for a class in October and decided to re-read it for my exam in March as I could not remember a single thing about it apart from the fact that I thoroughly disliked it.
The first time I read it I didn't really know why I disliked it so much, but after my re-read I think I can somewhat formulate my thoughts / critique.
Basically, this book is super masculine. All stories center around men (so far no problem) and all of them are frustrated and most of them are kind of stuck in their lives in small rural towns with no way out (still no problem so far). However, most choose pretty unhealthy ways of coping with their feelings. There is a lot of violence, alcohol and questionable views towards women, which go from entitlement to crude jokes to sexual assault. For example:
There are more examples of this kind of behaviour which I won't point out for spoiler reasons. For equity reasons I'll also point out that in one story a guy gets sexually abused by girls.
All in all, I have to say I don't understand why this short story collection has such a good rating. The topics the book proposes, young men being stuck in rural Ireland and being frustrated about that, being young dads, having fincancial trouble, losing loved ones, all in all could be really interesting if they had been handled better.
The first time I read it I didn't really know why I disliked it so much, but after my re-read I think I can somewhat formulate my thoughts / critique.
Basically, this book is super masculine. All stories center around men (so far no problem) and all of them are frustrated and most of them are kind of stuck in their lives in small rural towns with no way out (still no problem so far). However, most choose pretty unhealthy ways of coping with their feelings. There is a lot of violence, alcohol and questionable views towards women, which go from entitlement to crude jokes to sexual assault. For example:
She smiled at him, flicked the brows in a way Arm figured for consent. Arm smiled and leaned in. Got a taste of the lips before she drew back and her hand was up on his throat. 'What the fuck,' she mouthed at him over the music. Arm shrugged [...]"
There are more examples of this kind of behaviour which I won't point out for spoiler reasons. For equity reasons I'll also point out that in one story a guy gets sexually abused by girls.
All in all, I have to say I don't understand why this short story collection has such a good rating. The topics the book proposes, young men being stuck in rural Ireland and being frustrated about that, being young dads, having fincancial trouble, losing loved ones, all in all could be really interesting if they had been handled better.