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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
A stunning introduction to a singular new voice in contemporary fiction.
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 brilliant writer.
"Starred Review. 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 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
"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
"Throughout this extraordinary debut, but particularly in the excellent stories that bookend it, Colin Barrett is asking the right questions." - The Guardian (UK)
"A stunning debut. The timeless nature of each story means this collection can - and will - be read many years from now." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"Raw and affecting…Barrett's use of language is powerful and surprising…These stories are moving and memorable and show a writer who understands people, place and the effects of porter on the human psyche." - Irish Independent
"It isn't necessarily the job of fiction writers to explain our social landscape, but sometimes the best of them do. Colin Barrett's short, brutal collection of stories presents clearly and without sentimentality a picture of the young Irish small-town male, in his current crisis of hopelessness and alienation." - The Irish Times
"Superbly observed … Every sentence counts in these mesmerizing stories from an exciting literary author." - Irish Examiner
"Young Skins knocked me on my ass. It's moody, funny, vibrant and vivid. It's beautifully compressed and unafraid to take a bruising or lyrical leap. Colin Barrett has, as they say, talent to burn, but I really hope he doesn't waste a drop." - Sam Lipsyte
"Exciting and stylistically adventurous." - Colm Toibín
"Colin Barrett, like all great storytellers, has the ability to weave a broader chronicle of Ireland out of stories that remain intimate, powerful and regional. Out of the local, the universal appears. He defines the many shades of the present time and suggests a compelling future. He is a writer to savour and look out for." - Colum McCann
This information about Young Skins was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Colin Barrett was born in 1982 and grew up in County Mayo. In 2009 he was awarded the Penguin Ireland Prize. His work has been published in The Stinging Fly magazine and in the anthologies, Sharp Sticks, Driven Nails (Stinging Fly Press, 2010) and Town and Country (Faber and Faber, 2013). This is his first book
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