Young Skins - by Colin Barrett (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature

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. Amongst them, there's jilted Jimmy, whose best friend Tug is the terror of the town and Jimmy's sole company in his search for the missing Clancy kid; Bat, a lovesick soul with a face like "a bowl of mashed up spuds" even before Nubbin Tansey's boot kicked it in; and Arm, a young and desperate criminal whose destiny is shaped when he and his partner, Dympna, fail to carry out a job. In each story, a local voice delineates the grittiness of post boom Irish society. These are unforgettable characters rendered through silence, humor, and violence.

Told in Barrett's vibrant, distinctive prose, Young Skins is an accomplished and irreverent debut from a singular new voice in contemporary fiction.

Review Quotes

Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; Winner of the Guardian First Book Award; Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature

"[Young Skins ]lives up to its laurels...exact and poetic...One sign of [Barrett's] striking maturity as a writer is that his characters stay in character...A clumsier writer might have made Arm (and other characters besides) an unconvincing juxtaposition of outward violence and inner sentimentality. Mr. Barrett makes him seamless and convincing: brutish but alive...Mr. Barrett does foundational things exceedingly well-structure, choices of (and switches in) perspective-without drawing attention to them. These are stories that are likely to be taught for their form...His judgment is better than authoritative; it is imaginative and enlarging."-New York Times

"Gritty...the stories often veer off in surprising narrative and stylistic directions...Barrett's voice, though bolstered by Irish tradition, is entirely his own."-New Yorker

"Sharp and lively...a rough, charged, and surprisingly fun read."-Interview Magazine

"A writer to watch out for."-Guernica

"The stories blend moments of horror with moments of hilarity, shocks of joy with shocks of despair, and no matter how grim a given scene by Barrett can get, it's a thrill to be alive to hear him."-Paris Review

"Young Irish writer Colin Barrett's subversive short story collection, Young Skins, may very well become my favorite book of 2015...Young Skins heralds a brilliant new age for Irish literature...Barrett's meticulously crafted narratives brim with plucky dialectical poetry so rhythmic it'll stick in your head like a three-chord punk song. These six stories and one novella brim also with the particular pleasure of a young writer operating with confidence and a wide-open heart. Rightly so: like James Joyce's Dubliners or Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha before him, Barrett proves that writing what you know can yield subversive and innovative results."-Bustle

"Mesmerizing...brutal, linguistically stylish tales of Sisyphean young men, voluntarily trapped within the confines of the fictional west of Ireland town of Glanbeigh."-Electric Literature

"Sometimes comic, sometimes melancholy, Young Skins touches the heart, as well as the mind."-Irish American Post

"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."-Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review)

"Justly acclaimed for his lyrical, deadpan style by some of the giants of contemporary Irish literature, including Anne Enright and Colm Tóibín, Barrett offers an extraordinary debut that heralds a brutal yet alluring new voice in contemporary fiction."-Library Journal (starred review)

"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 is fertile with the stuff of good fiction."-Kirkus

"Many fiction writers are attracted to non-existent but identifiable settings. Thomas Hardy created Wessex, Robert Musil transformed Austria-Hungary into Kakania, and in Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner literally mapped his Yoknapatawpha county. At once Lafayette, Mississippi, and not Lafayette, Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha offered readers a familiar setting without the danger of