Sep 17, 2024
He felt like he was becoming transparent, his skin and organs turning to glass. He felt like he was spinning through an endless void of outer space.
— Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
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He felt like he was becoming transparent, his skin and organs turning to glass. He felt like he was spinning through an endless void of outer space.
— Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
"It doesn’t matter if sequences are good or bad. Is it entertaining or not? Are they pertinent or not? Do they move the plot forward or not? And do they make things clearer as opposed to being digressive or going off on little side trips that may not have been necessary?" ~Colin Barrett
Colin Barrett is an award-winning Irish Canadian writer of literary fiction.
how little you had to do with your body
Dev thought about how little you had to do with your body, really; it was true that it had its routines and processes, most of which were benign and necessary, but some of which were catastrophic and inexplicable. And the thing was, it perpetuated those processes irrespective of your wishes. He thought about how, when it came down to it, you were a kind of janitor or superintendent of your body, responsible only for its sanitation and presentation. You fuelled it and disposed of its waste, showered it, dressed it. You brushed its hair and you cut its nails. But you could choose not to do these things and your body, regardless of your neglect, would simply carry on for as long as it could.
— Colin Barrett, Wild Houses (Grove Press, March 12 2024)
Book Review
Colin Barrett: Young Skins. ★★★★★ Short Stories, Irish Literature. Published 2013
Blurb: Enter the small, rural town of Glanbeigh, a place whose fate took a downturn with the Celtic Tiger, a desolate spot where buffoonery and tension simmer and erupt, and booze-sodden boredom fills the corners of every pub and nightclub. Here, and in the towns beyond, the young live hard and wear the scars.
My review: A brilliant debut, really fine story telling. I enjoyed this collection quite a lot.
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
For more short stories that explore love in all its undiluted forms, try these:
A Visit From The Good Squad by Jennifer Egan for another set of interconnected tales detailing the intimate lives of friends, lovers, and strangers.
Homesick For Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh for a collection of dark and often hilarious stories that expose the depths of human self-deception.
Whatever Happened To Interracial Love by Kathleen Collins for a previously unpublished collection about lovers of all kinds from a voice we lost too soon.
Young Skins by Colin Barrett for more tough but tender tales about young men navigating love, addiction, and murder.
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He was back where he always seemed to end up. His life, circling, tighter and tighter, in on itself. It was as if every time he tried to move off, however tentatively, in a new direction, he was wrenched right back to the centre of himself. And that centre was getting smaller and smaller, more decrepit and ferociously reduced.
— Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
It was relatively easy to imagine death; death would just be a deep, oblivious sleep, a massive sedation you never come around from. Eternity was harder. Eternity defeated the compulsion to scale, to think in numbers and distance.
— Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
His thoughts, unsolicited, unarticulated and stacking feverishly up inside his mind, began to feed on themselves, like penned rats.
— Colin Barrett, Wild Houses