Real Small Town Irish People

Elmore Leonard is dead. He certainly is not creating full-blooded criminals in a small rural town in western Ireland. The maestro of crime drama left us in 2013. But thoughts of him kept emerging as I saw so many things I loved about his work in “Wild Houses.” The characters here are so real– the dialog rings so true. The economy of language is so sharp.

We open with a simple kidnapping caper involving drug dealers trying to force payment owed when their merchandise was lost. On the surface, it does not sound all that complicated, just a bare-bones skeleton of a plot, something familiar sounding.

And then, we meet the characters. “Doll” English has been kidnapped so that his brother will pay off the thugs. His girlfriend, Nicky, is seventeen and just about ready to break out of the restrictive chains of this little town. The Ferdia brothers are the “masterminds” behind this whole thing, prone to violence with hair trigger tempers. Dev is an unwitting accomplice, pressured into holding the hostage at his house. He is the surprising treasure of the story, sowing his point of view into the action. He befriends the hostage and consistently questions what all this is leading to.

The backstory on Dev is that he has been a loner– recently losing his mother and having been deserted by his father. Socially impaired, he was routinely bullied at school before being ignored altogether. “...he began to miss (the) beatings, because the beatings at least involved human contact.” Now he spends his time alone in his house, trying to get a grip on himself with antidepressants and anxiety medications. “He could feel the pill working its sedating magic, calming his blood and thickening his thoughts, making them slow and settle like silt at the bottom of his darkening mind.”

This is Colin Barrett’s first novel. He has published two acclaimed short story collections, “Young Skins” and “Homesickness,” both also depicting life in rural Ireland. Those sets, while brilliant, seem to have a darker tone than “Wild Houses.” The darkness is here, with life's struggles and the sense that abandonment is a burden most of the characters share. There is a lot of humor here, however, and the plot races along with a captivating energy.

I began by invoking the name of Elmore Leonard. No, I am not seriously banding the two together– that would not be justified at this time. My point is that I miss reading another new Leonard offering– and this book, albeit strongly of the Irish world, brought back many of those same qualities. I missed them. I cannot wait to read more Colin Barrett.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #WildHouses #NetGalley @groveatlantic @ColinBarrett82

‘Believe it or not, I know what I’m like,’ speaks a character in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses. ‘Every so often, it dawns on me, in cold horror.’

Taking place over a long weekend in the middle of nowhere Irish countryside, this slim novel makes an impact. Kidnapping, drugs, violent beatings sprinkled over quiet moments, memories and flashbacks. There's dark humor. There's pathos. An observation about a simple chair leads to pages of introspection about the father who used to sit in that chair, and why the character chooses not to sit in it. Just some beautiful writing about deeply sad and often cruel situations.

Barrett brings out the humanity in these flawed characters, and gives us a few to root for. I am looking forward to reading more of his work.

My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC.

Writer Colin Barrett was one of the ten writers listed in the UK’s Observer New Review’s 10 Best New Novelists, a list I’ve been quietly working through having read Leo Vardiashvili’s #HardByAGreatForest and Andrés N Ordorica’s #HowWeNamedTheStars

And yes the fact that Barrett is Irish made me particularly interested in this title, #WildHouses, because if last year taught me anything it’s that I can’t get enough of Irish writers! Set in County Mayo Ireland, Barrett’s one sitting book involves the kidnapping of a teenage boy, Doll by a group of local thugs looking to use him as ransom to get a debt they’re owed from Doll’s brother Cillian. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else in some capacity and hardly anyone actually leaves. Barrett divides the bulk of the book between two characters, Dev, a gentle giant who gets reluctantly pulled into the kidnapping scheme by having a house that works for it’s remoteness, and Doll’s girlfriend Nicky, a street smart survivor orphaned after both her parents died of cancer within the same year. Humor and tension go hand in hand here as Barrett fills in backstory for the aforementioned characters as well as the rest of the motley crew, and the whole tone of this for an a American comparison felt like a season of FX’s #Fargo. And although the ending felt more like a whimper than a bang after what had preceded it, I would still recommend this for its excellently drawn characters. Thank you to @groveatlantic and @netgalley for the advance copy. #WildHouses is out now!

Set in and around Ballina, a small town in County Mayo, Ireland, the book begins when as a result of a drug feud the Ferdia brothers, Gabe and Sketch, local enforcers, kidnap the younger brother of small-time dealer Cillian English and hide him away in a remote house. The house belongs to Dev, an isolated individual, who has nothing to do with any of this, but is useful to the brothers to host young Doll. And really that’s about it. The kidnapping eventually resolves and I found it all underwhelming. A pretty pointless plot, with very little jeopardy or tension. The characters are one-dimensional and don’t develop. The luckless Dev is the most interesting. He has more or less left society following the death of his mother and is now a recluse. He feels for Doll but seems powerless to act. Nothing much happens in small-town Ireland and nothing much happens in this novel. It’s reasonably well-written, but didn’t seem to me to be either original or particularly insightful. There are occasional flashes of humour, but not enough to counterweigh the rather flat writing style. Not a bad book, by any means, but not a very impressive one either.

I am so in love with Irish literature, and this book hit the spot for me.

One of the Globe and Mail's most anticipated books of 2024, this debut novel by Irish Canadian author Colin Barrett showcases how the lives of residents overlap in a small Irish town as a feud erupts and a young man is kidnapped and held for ransom.

This was my first dive into Barrett's writing, and I now understand why I've heard such praise.

I loved how Barrett captured the essence of small-town life, portraying its slow pace, feelings of hopelessness, and the constraints of limited opportunities.

I also adored the reclusive, young Dev who is drawn into a kidnapping scheme, and Nicky, a seventeen-year-old girl trying to save her boyfriend and decide what she wants to do with life.

I saw that some people who like to see a sequel...and I could not agree more... because I want MORE from Dev and Nicky specifically. I loved them.

Definitely read this if you like quiet Irish literature. You can get your hands on it on Tuesday, March 19, 2024.

4 ⭐️ for me.

"Wild Houses" is one of my favourite novels of this year. The novel takes place in a cold feeling rural Ireland, packed to the brim with the raw and incredibly lifelike cast of small-town characters. A plunge into the quiet but crime filled life of Dev, now living on his own after the death of his mother, takes the reader on a darkly comedic but incredibly heartwrenching and hopeless journey. The characters are all wrapped up within the kidnapping of Doll English, creating a twisting whirlpool of events. Often within novels featuring small towns there is a portrayal of a tight knit community but within this, the reality of the suffocating and tangled up web of human connectedness is shown. Everything feels so real and untouched, like you're witnessing it firsthand. It draws you in and makes you feel like another character, drowning in the calamity, but drowning in it together.

I came across Colin Barrett earlier this year when I got his book of short stories, 'Homesickness', on Kindle and ploughed through them in a realatively short timeframe. I did the same with 'Wild Houses', finishing it in about two-and-a-half days. The story is relatively simple: taking place over the course of one long weekend in Mayo, two hardmen for a local drug dealer lift a young fella off the street and squirrel him away in the home of a man who wants nothing more to be left alone. In a secondary plot, the kidnapped man's girlfriend considers her own future while trying to figure out where said boyfriend has disappeared to.
What I have liked about Barrett's writing is the familiarity of his characters, the main characters in particular - they feel authentic, as if the overarcing story is a jigsaw and the character pieces slot in perfectly. Dev and Nicky are our tow main characters, comparable primarily by the fact that they have both experienced huge loss and grief in their lives. They are, as the novel says, characters in a holding pattern but neither knows what they are holding out for.
Secondary characters include the Ferdia brothers, Sketch and Gabe, who are slightly caricatured henchmen (for want of a better word), although their darker turns are in explosions of violence, and the English brothers, Doll and Cillian, the latter a submissive former drug dealer.
While the story ploughs along swiftly, the real artistry is in the introspective moments that Barrett writes - in that light, the main plot becomes secondary to learning about Nicky and, in particular, Dev, whose childhood was less than memorable. Barrett conveys an immeasurable sadness in Dev, a man who knows he has to make a change but the problem with doing something is that there's always something else you have to do first.
This is an impressive debut novel that not only taps into the 'heart of darkness' of a small local area, with a healthy dose of dark comedy to keep the gravity of the situation from overwhelming.
My thanks to Grove Press, via NetGalley for this ARC in exhange for an honest review.

Review will be posted on the blog "thereadersroom.org" on Monday March 11, 2024.

Set in the Irish town of Ballina, Wild Houses is a literary crime novel (so to speak). Small time drug dealer, Cillian English owes a significant amount of money to his former boss. His failure to repay this money leads to the kidnapping of his younger brother, "Doll", and a series of events and violence. The novel is told from the alternating points of view of Dev Hendricks (cousin to the two kidnappers) and Nicky, Doll's girlfriend.

Although Wild Houses centers on a crime, it's more literary fiction than it is crime novel since the meat of the novel is centered on the exploration of small-town life, stagnation, and psychological underpinnings of growing up in a place with limited opportunities. Wild Houses is beautifully written and it's clear that sentences are crafted with incredible precision. The descriptions of people and places were wonderful and left me with very vivid imagery of the place and the people living there.

Gabe, by contrast, was skin and bone. He was touching forty but looked ten years older again, with a face on him like a vandalized church, long and angular and pitted, eyes glinting deep in their sockets like smashed-out windows.

I really enjoyed this short novel. It made me laugh, tear up, and truly feel the sense of place and the pain of some characters. Dev's storyline was beautifully rendered and his feeling of numbness and stagnation was heart-breaking. I found the author's ability to portray the inner lives of his characters without sentimentality or overly dramatic passages to be rather brilliant. The matter-of-fact style leads the reader to create that emotion for themselves. Barrett doesn't try and tug at your heartstrings but he nevertheless does leave you feeling emotionally impacted and feeling every bit of loneliness and sensation of being trapped.

...Moira Hendrick was so pervasive a presence in his life that she had assumed a kind of invisibility, in that her effects were everywhere, so reliability dispersed Dev did not need to notice or acknowledge them, the way, when you grow up, in a certain landscape, eventually you stop seeing it, because every last particle of it has been stamped upon your memory.

I loved the writing, loved the sense of atmosphere, and loved Dev's perspective. I was less interested in Nicky's point of view although her perspective presented a different sort of "stuckness" with which I could connect. Overall, a very solid and enjoyable read.

I'd recommend this book for those who love Irish literature and novels that evoke a sense of time and place.

Too confusing and disjointed. Really liked the writing but something felt off. DNF and could not finish even when I forced myself.

Barrett’s writing is stunning, detailed and precise. He creates a clear picture of his characters and the landscape and the way of that life is experienced. Some of his descriptions are breathtakingly intimate, and these close moments make this book worth reading and savouring.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-ARC!!

I received this from Netgalley.com.

A slow moving, deep read that I never grasped the meaning of.

2.25☆

Well written but I did find some of the formatting a little confusing - some of this felt a little bit disjointed. But overall a very solid and also fairly quick read.

An extremely intriguing book but also one that talks about desperation, isolation, and people on the edge.
Their story mixes and I couldn't help feeling for them as they feel like someone with no scope and no hope.
There's some dark humour, there moments when you feel the bleakness of the place.
Great storytelling, a picture of Dublin very far from the postcard one.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

3.5 Stars

This is a story of the lives of those who live in a rural spot in Ireland, and end up involved in a kidnapping.

This was one of the books I’d expected to love, and while I didn’t dislike it, I just didn’t love it, although there were some parts that were better than others. It involves drugs, a kidnapping and a ransom, and - of course, a bunch of seedy characters, none of which seem to have a working brain cell. There are many moments with potential danger - but which also seem to end up falling apart.

What I did appreciate was the writing, which has a sharp-witted essence of humour without going over the top.


Pub Date: 19 Mar 2024

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic, Grove Press

This is a rollercoaster of a novel, a gritty and seedy look at the underbelly of Irish society. In the same vein as the work of Lisa McInerney, small-town Ireland is examined through the lens of loneliness and grief, which underpins the chaos of these characters' experiences with humour and heartache. I live in the area where the novel is set and have no experience of the world these characters inhabit. This is not an easy read, but it is important in placing a strata of Irish society under the spotlight.

The language is exquisite. 'A centipede of shackled trolleys rattling lonesomely', 'aging Georgie ill-tempered, and increasingly unintrepid' and the natives possessing traits in 'massive hereditary infusions' Fabulous.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC

This book dealt with a variety of different relationships and most of them personified sadness, estrangement, bullying , and being outcasts. Dev ‘s upbringing hindered his ability to be a functional member of society. He had empathy but lacked the ability to refocus it to add purpose to his life. Doll too had redeeming traits but living in his environment was also hindering his growth . Doll’s girlfriend understands her environment and knows she has to leave. Rest of the characters will continue to live unproductive lives in this small Irish community. This book had some light moments but darkness and despair gripped it .

Although this is a debut novel, Colin Barrett is a short story with a devoted following, which goes a long way of explaining why Wild Houses is so beautifully written, completely immersive, and contains all the elements that make Irish fiction so readable. Here we have characters that stand up off the page, speaking in realistic dialogue, inhabiting a plot that moves at a pace that keeps the reader fully engaged. Central is Dev, who opens his door one night to a couple of local thugs hauling in a bewildered third man who is to serve as a bargaining chip for a ransom demand. Dev's past is the most examined of the cast, giving insight into why he makes the choices he does. To say more would be unfair and take away the pleasure of discovery for a reader. Others have suggested a sequel, and I agree.

A good read of gritty Irish town with wonderful characters at the tough end of town. Funny and an enjoyable read. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

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.

Irish writers are enjoying a lot of international limelight. Colin Barrett deserves it, and though he has written a novel worthy of it, he likely won't receive it anyway. Barrett's novel examines the underbelly of postindustrial Ireland—nobody in his novel voices a political alternative or sentimental longing, a la Sally Rooney; a postcolonial awareness and romantic intrigue, a la Naoise Dolan; or a moral steadiness, a la Claire Keegan. This is an Ireland that survives off the dole and drugs. His characters aren't anxious bourgeoisie or virtuous proletarians but misfits and ne'er-do-wells. That's a much harder sell to the broad audience this novel deserves. Love, where it exists, feels like a corrosive chemical dependence. The novel's darkness and seediness will call to mind Stephen Markley's debut novel, OHIO, but with greater writerly maturity. Barrett has oiled the MFA clunkiness of his earlier collections and written something gripping.