Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
Disclaimer*
I love Colin Barrett for some reasons..
He is a Mayo man, in fact not just Mayo but Ballina, Co. Mayo. Ballina is the nearest "big" town to where I am originally from in Rossport Mayo so I immediately connect and appreciate the Mayo characters he writes about. He gets them so right!
He is also a supremely talented writer and extremely modest. He writes gorgeous short stories, pieces of art.
"Young Skins", his short story collection was published in 2014 and I thoroughly enjoyed every story. One of the longer stories in that collection "Calm with horses" was made into a feature film with Barry Keoghan, which is also excellent.
Disclaimers over!
Wild Houses-my thoughts
This is a novella so it is the perfect short-er read.
It is set in Ballina coming up to the Ballina Salmon Festival which is a real thing and the biggest festival in the town every summer.
Cillian English is a small-time drug dealer and prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer, Cillian English, and he is trouble deep with two other bigger-dealers, Gabe and Sketch.
Dev, an anxious recluse, answers his door in the first pages to Gabe and Sketch and they`ve kidnapped someone-Cillian`s brother, Doll.
Nicky is Doll`s girlfriend and she knows something is wrong when she can`t get through to Doll.
The scene is set as is the story.
First of, the characters, setting and dialogue are just perfect. Colin, being a Mayo man gets and observes Mayo people. Mayo people are really cute and quite funny but not any writer could capture this the way Colin does.
There are hugely emotional parts to the past of some of the characters, traumatic even. Dev`s character`s past is especially heartbreaking. I loved the way the story goes back and forth into Nicky and Dev`s past. I didn`t want to let these characters go.
Hopefully, there is a sequel. Highly recommend.
Colin has written his first novel/novella and he has excelled! Love it!
Thanks to @groveatlantic for an proof copy of Wild Houses. So appreciative to read this before launch in March 2024.
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