Homesickness
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The second book from the “exact and poetic” (New York Times) author of critical smash Young Skins, winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35, Homesickness is an emotionally resonant and wonderfully wry collection that follows the lives of outcasts, misfits, and malcontents from County Mayo to Canada.
When Colin Barrett’s debut Young Skins published, it swept up several major literary awards, and, in both its linguistic originality and sharply drawn portraits of working-class Ireland, earned Barrett comparisons to Faulkner, Hardy, and Musil. Now, in a blistering follow-up collection, Barrett brings together eight character-driven stories, each showcasing his inimitably observant eye and darkly funny style.
A quiet night in a local pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive; a funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts simply won’t lay in wake; a shooting sees a veteran policewoman confront the banality of her own existence; and an aspiring writer grapples with his father’s cancer diagnosis and in his despair wreaks havoc on his mentor’s life.
The second piece of fiction from a “lyrical and tough and smart” (Anne Enright) voice in contemporary Irish literature, Homesickness marks Colin Barrett out as our most brilliantly original and captivating storyteller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barrett (Young Skins) returns with a set of bittersweet and chiseled tales of Irish life. Each story coolly dissects various disappointments, tragedies, and eccentrics, avoiding epiphanies in favor of quiet, suggestive endings. In the opener, "A Shooting in Rathreedane," even-keeled police sergeant Jackie Noonan responds to the shooting of a petty criminal. While attempting to save his life, Noonan treats him with tenderness, but later can't help feeling ambivalent about his survival. In the slightly surreal and funny "The Alps," a highlight, three brothers encounter a sword-wielding man at their local watering hole. The sharp-edged "Anhedonia, Here I Come" features an unaccomplished poet who, despite making good money drawing pornographic commissions—"the purest perverts longed for their own species of the poetic, for the incarnation of the inconsummatable"—clings to his versifying dreams. And in "The 10," football prodigy Danny Faulkner returns to his hometown and his high school sweetheart after a stint in Manchester United's youth academy. Back home, Danny fends off the recruiting efforts of the local men's team, while his weekend plans consist of watching workers affix new blades to the wind farm's turbines—a far cry from the Premier League. From gritty realism to oddball noir, this assured collection demonstrates the talent of a distinctive writer.
Customer Reviews
Great stuff.
Reminds me of Dubliners.