Young Skins

Starred review from January 19, 2015
Barrett’s accomplished debut collection, winner of the Guardian First Book Award and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2014, brims with young men affixed to bar stools with drained pint glasses, recalling tales of past failures over pub chatter. The stories’ protagonists function on society’s fringes—as bouncers, washed-up musicians, cheap muscle—yet all eschew the single dimension often reserved for such characters, instead speaking in voices both world-weary and wise, equally confident and lost. In “Stand Your Skin,” a disfigured service-station employee attempts to return to his old haunts after he’s invited to a coworker’s going-away party, only to realize he can’t slip into his former self. “Diamonds” finds a recovering alcoholic tempted to fall off the wagon by a new face at his AA meeting and her exotic stories of diamond mines. The centerpiece of the volume is a masterly novella, “Calm with Horses,” that follows a thug nicknamed Arm while he navigates fatherhood and the anguish of his profession as the right-hand man to a local drug dealer. Moments of violence punctuate several of these stories, but the collection’s true impact comes in the gifted prose of Barrett, which flourishes in poetic and spare scenes; he is an assured, powerful new literary voice. Agent: Lucy Luck Associates.

January 15, 2015
A story collection in which the nights of small-town Ireland are filled with the ramblings of restless youth.Glanbeigh is a fictional town in County Mayo, and the teens and 20-somethings are out in droves to take back the night. The pub is the center of their world. In "The Clancy Kid," Jimmy and his mate Tug drink off a hangover and flip the car of an ex's new fiance: "I am young, and the young do not number many here, but it is fair to say we have the run of the place." And so Jimmy sets the hopeless tone, yet there are moments of delight as Tug, a hulk of a boy-man who gets violent when off his meds, plays with a child who guards the bridge to Farrow Hill, playing at being ''king.'' In "Bait," a night of pool hustling turns into sudden violence in a turn-the-tables sexual confrontation. In ''Stand Your Skin, '' Bat is a damaged man, kicked in the head in a pub in a moment of senseless violence between a bunch of college kids and locals. The kicker, "who couldn't stand being in his own skin," commits suicide while Bat has to remain in pain, living in the surgically corrected skin of his own face. This is a powerful dark shadow of a tale, the heart of this collection of six stories and one longer novella. Barrett knows the woods and roads surrounding Glanbeigh as well as he understands the youth who roam them. This is his territory, his people. He writes with beauty and a toughness that captures the essence of boredom and angst. Barrett has given us moments that resonate true to a culture, a population and a geography that are fertile with the stuff of good fiction.

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October 1, 2014

Discovered by Kevin Barry, short-listed for the 2014 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and for two categories (Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year and Short Story of the Year) at the 2013 Irish Book Awards, boosted as a book to watch by the Guardian, and the recipient of sparkling UK reviews, this collection about struggling souls in small-town, post-boom Glanbeigh, Ireland, should not be missed.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2014

As we see in the six short stories and novella included here, the residents of the fictional County Mayo town of Glanbeigh are desperate folk. All seem to be on a quest for something unobtainable--understanding, love, redemption--and though the violence running through the streets like a current is tempered by a shared tenderness and humor, Glanbeigh remains a grim place where its unforgettable citizens come to terms with what might have been. For example, Tug, a big man given to bouts of rage, tries to experience normalcy by neglecting to take his meds. Likewise, Bat conceals and maybe protects his gentle nature behind a busted-up face, dirty clothing, and body odor. In the end, Glanbeigh seems to take more from its residents than it gives, with most compensating by honoring an unspoken code of simple decency and a few undermining it at every opportunity. VERDICT Justly acclaimed for his lyrical, deadpan style by some of the giants of contemporary Irish literature, including Anne Enright and Colm Toibin, Barrett offers an extraordinary debut that heralds a brutal yet alluring new voice in contemporary fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 9/15/14.]--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2014

As we see in the six short stories and novella included here, the residents of the fictional County Mayo town of Glanbeigh are desperate folk. All seem to be on a quest for something unobtainable--understanding, love, redemption--and though the violence running through the streets like a current is tempered by a shared tenderness and humor, Glanbeigh remains a grim place where its unforgettable citizens come to terms with what might have been. For example, Tug, a big man given to bouts of rage, tries to experience normalcy by neglecting to take his meds. Likewise, Bat conceals and maybe protects his gentle nature behind a busted-up face, dirty clothing, and body odor. In the end, Glanbeigh seems to take more from its residents than it gives, with most compensating by honoring an unspoken code of simple decency and a few undermining it at every opportunity. VERDICT Justly acclaimed for his lyrical, deadpan style by some of the giants of contemporary Irish literature, including Anne Enright and Colm Toibin, Barrett offers an extraordinary debut that heralds a brutal yet alluring new voice in contemporary fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 9/15/14.]--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.