Irish authors reading list

Reading lists

10 must-read books by Irish authors

A host of short story collections photographed against a red background

Short_stories_2022_1800_1200

12 short story collections to sink into

Homesickness

&lsquo;A mesmerisingly powerful book&rsquo; SALLY ROONEY 
 
Illuminating the lives of outcasts, misfits and malcontents, this is the darkly funny and moving second book from the award-winning author of Young Skins. 
 
A quiet night in the neighbourhood pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive. A funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts won't settle. A shooting sees an everyday call-out lead a policewoman to confront the banality of her own existence. 
In his new collection of stories, Colin Barrett takes us to the barren backwaters of County Mayo, via Canada &ndash; always with an eye for the abrupt and absurd. 
 
'Superb... There is so much life in these pages' DOUGLAS STUART 
 
'Fierce, tender...unforgettable' BRANDON TAYLOR 
 
'Addictive, stylish and violently funny... Outstanding' KEVIN BARRY

A mesmerisingly powerful book, full of the strangeness and beauty of life. I've learned so much from Colin Barrett's work as a reader and writer...these stories are his best yet

Full of humour and small-town Irish colour... His [Barrett's] second collection confirms him as one of the very best short-story writers in the business

A masterwork - by turns hilarious and heartbreaking... What fierce, tender stories. Totally unforgettable

The stories in Homesickness are crafted with skill and flair. Colin Barrett anchors the work with emotional accuracy and careful delineation of character, and then, using metaphors and beautifully made sentences, he lets his narrative soar

Lyrical and tough and smart... His stories are set in a familiar emotional landscape, but they give us endings that are new

Addictive, stylish and violently funny stories, with riches on every page - an outstanding collection

Shot through with dark humor, pitch-perfect dialogue and a signature freshness that makes life palpable on the page...Homesickness is graced with an original, lingering beauty

Even though we rarely enter their internal worlds, Colin Barrett conjures interiority through his linguistic precision and attention to external detail, so that each story lingers in the mind and haunts its successors

Superb...[T]here is an utterness to his attention, a devotion to the lives of his characters, that shifts the work into some more lasting place. Barrett is already one of the leading writers of the Irish short story, which is to braggingly say, one of the leading writers of the short story anywhere. He means every word and regrets every word. He just kills it

Something struck me as I read these beautifully crafted, desperately sad, but often very funny stories: there is now a branch of English called the Colin Barrett

This is a beautiful and moving collection, from one of the best story writers today.

Homesickness is an adroit, wry set of stories by an author who has an eye for the quirks of human nature.

With a sharp eye for the absurd in the ordinary, Barrett's stories impart gritty and touching realisations about life as it really is. Edgy, sharp and utterly original, Homesickness is an utterly compelling collection and Barrett is meticulous

Colin Barrett is a young man in the town of the short story, but it's fair to say he has the run of the place

Homesickness is another finely crafted collection... Crisply told, fond of an eye-catching flourish... the stories draw energy from the rhythms of west of Ireland small talk, added to Barrett's eye for striking detail...The scenarios are richly layered, with punchy payoffs.

Strange and haunting fiction. You could open Homesickness at any page and find sentences of vim and elegance, ringing dialogue...and similes to savour.

Homesickness presents us with a set of characters forever losing things: other people's dogs, girlfriends, the will to live. But in the course of these stories they find things, too: courage; a crumpled sort of wisdom; the will to live. Between the comedy, and the pure thrill of the language, there's a lot of sorrow and mental illness here, but the afterglow of the stories, which settle and stay with you, is one of moving regard for the flaws and wants we battle, flee, and bargain with every day of our lives

Vivid, punchy... Barrett delineates with verve the ways his characters struggle.

Worth the wait... few do it as well as Colin Barrett.

Barrett's... brilliant second collection confirms him as one of the very best short-story writers in the business.

New Statesman, *The Best Books of 2022 so far*

Barrett's stories are, without exception, beautifully written, full of arresting imagery.

Bittersweet and chiseled...From gritty realism to oddball noir, this assured collection demonstrates the talent of a distinctive writer.

Richly descriptive...This sharply observant collection resists pigeonholing its recalcitrant characters.

A masterwork-by turns hilarious and heart-breaking, these stories shimmer. No story writer at work today thrills me more than Colin Barrett, whose characters feel immediately so familiar and true in their capacity to maim and love. What fierce, tender stories. Totally unforgettable.

Funny, devastating, slow-burning, these understated tales of misfits and misadventures in smalltown Ireland are written with a casual grace.

Eight stories ... written with vim and elegance and more than deliver on the promise of Barrett's acclaimed 2014 debut, Young Skins.

The 'mesmerisingly powerful' (Sally Rooney) second book from the author of critical smash Young Skins, winner of the Guardian First Book Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. 
 
A quiet night in the neighbourhood pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive. A funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts won't settle. A shooting sees an everyday call-out lead a policewoman to confront the banality of her own existence. In eight stories, Colin Barrett takes us to the barren backwaters of County Mayo, via Canada, and - with an eye for the abrupt and absurd - illuminates the lives of outcasts, misfits and malcontents. 
 
'One of the best story writers in the English language today' Financial Times 
 
'Superb... There is so much life in these pages' DOUGLAS STUART 
 
'Fierce, tender...unforgettable' BRANDON TAYLOR 
 
'Addictive, stylish and violently funny... Outstanding' KEVIN BARRY

Calm With Horses

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE 
 
Arm, an ex-boxer with a haunted past and a fractured present, finds himself the tool of the notorious Devers family. But when an opportunity to break free and offer his family a new life arises, his actions can’t be without consequence. 
 
First published in the award-winning collection, Young Skins, the novella ‘Calm With Horses’ was adapted for film in 2020. It has been described by Mark Kermode as ‘an immersive tale of tortured masculinity and divided loyalties that pulls the viewer right into the raging bull mindset of its haunted protagonist.’

Young Skins

A magnificent, critically acclaimed collection of stories from Ireland's most exciting young writer

Colin Barrett's sentences are lyrical and tough and smart, but there is something more here that makes him a really good writer. His stories are set in a familiar emotional landscape, but they give us endings that are new. What seems to be about sorrow and foreboding turns into an adventure, instead, in the tender art of the unexpected.

Language, structure, style - Colin Barrett has all the weapons at his disposal, and how, and he has an intuitive sense for what a short story is, and what it can do.

Colin Barrett is a young man in the town of the short story, but it’s fair to say he has the run of the place. This is a joyously fine collection, crackling with energy and verve, fit for the back pocket of anyone who loves a good story well told.

Magnificent...A stunning debut... The timeless nature of each story means this collection can - and will - be read many years from now.

Incredible… Human violence, beauty, brilliance of language – this book reminds you of the massive things you can do in short fiction.

Should you be surprised that yet another superbly articulate and word-drunk writer has come out of Ireland? Perhaps not; but when that writer's work is as moving, as funny, as spectacularly evocative as Young Skins, you should be astonished, and amazed, and grateful. Some of the stories in this debut collection are amongst the best in the language. That a young writer possesses a talent this great is a cause for celebration, matched only by his ability to control and harness it. A minute after finishing this book I was itching to read Colin Barrett's next.

A new fabulous and forensic voice to sing out Ireland’s woes.

Colin Barrett is a writer of extraordinary gifts. I loved this compelling and utterly persuasive collection, the strongest debut I've read in some years.

[Barrett's] stories invite second readings that – the mark of really good work – seem to uncover sentences that weren't there the first time around... Throughout this extraordinary debut, but particularly in the excellent stories that bookend it, Colin Barrett is asking the right questions.

A debut short story collection that captures what it’s like to be young in rural Ireland in 2014.

The best collection we’ll read all year: a massive new talent, and stories that will make you yearn and nod and cry.

Barrett excels at scenarios rich in moral and emotional complications and his finely wrought sentences crunch and snap with hard-bitten lyricism.

Freakishly good... Barrett’s astonishingly mature stories windmill with violent abandon into our time.

How dare a debut writer be this good? Young Skins has all the hallmarks of an instant classic… His vision is sharp, his wit is sly, and the stories in this collection come alive with that ineffable thing – soul.

Barrett’s details shine like diamonds in a coal scuttle.

‘[Barrett] cuts across all kinds of boundaries of class and education to produce immensely tender portraits of living characters.

This is an exceptional debut, and one of the best collection of short stories that I have read in years.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a better collection by somebody I had never heard of

A technically-assured collection that never disappoints

WINNER OF THE 2014 GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 
 
'One of the best books of the past decade... The characters are edgy, often violent, locked into a world described in ways that are both harsh and tender. . . Adds a sense of myth, even a spiritual aura, to the narrative that lifts the meanness of the circumstances into some other realm' Colm Tóibín, Washington Post 
 
*Winner of the 2014 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 
*Winner of the 2014 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 
 
This magnificent collection takes us to Glanbeigh, a small town in rural Ireland - a town in which the youth have the run of the place. Boy racers speed down the back lanes; couples haunt the midnight woods; young skins huddle in the cold once The Peacock has closed its doors. Here the young live hard and wear the scars. It matters whose sister you were seen with. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, it matters a very great deal. 
 
Colin Barrett's debut does not take us to Glanbeigh alone; there are other towns, and older characters. But each story is defined by a youth lived in a crucible of menace and desire - and each crackles with the uniform energy and force that distinguish this terrific collection.

Colin Barrett

Sublime… Wild Houses is a thrillingly moreish novel with some of the sharpest dialogue I’ve read in any recent debut and characters who held me captive until the very last page

A delicate and beautiful book about the lives of lonely people... Page after faultless page, Wild Houses is a sheer joy to read... Colin Barrett's the real deal, but then we knew that already

So consistently witty and inventive that one struggles to think of recent novels that could stand up to comparison

With a thrillerish intensity… Barrett expertly handles the combination of narrative-driving dialogue, exhilarating action scenes and quieter moments designed to build tension… I was unable to put Wild Houses down

After years of short stories, Barrett’s transition to the longer span of the novel is confidently done. Descriptive set pieces are linked and expanded, yet every paragraph is created with care

You’ll love Colin Barrett’s debut novel… Barrett has a keen ear for the absurd that held me captive until the very last page

With two collections behind him, Barrett is well established as a master both of the short story and the sentence; his debut novel confirms and extends all his promise. Wild Houses is a propulsive, darkly comic and superlatively written account of frustration and misadventure in a small Irish town... The connections between the cast and the past tragedies that have forged them are expertly revealed in a slow-burn study of character and fate that’s also an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Violence and farce mingle in a novel that feels as sharp, funny and bitingly bittersweet as life

Barrett’s superb debut novel deepens the world of his two short-story collections… The novel has the tension of a gritty noir thriller and the comic menace of a Pinter play

Barrett can sustain a narrative across a novel without sacrificing the panache and precision that has made him one of the most stylish fiction writers at work today. His prose is a delight from the first page

Wild Houses realises life in full and without pity... A palpable sense of human eccentricity, and endurance, is always there, just beneath the surface

Until now, Colin Barrett has made his name as an artist of the short story… Wild Houses is a delight, with a wider space for his talent to spread and for his acutely observed characters to linger

This strange and beautiful novel brings to life an entire world. Wild Houses is a book not just to read but to live inside

Sharp and affecting, expansive and playful, Barrett has written a gorgeous novel filled with gorgeous sentences. A dream to read, and no doubt destined to be one of the novels of the year

Colin Barrett quietly, insistently, writes so deeply into his characters you could reach out and touch them. Wild Houses is a gift of true storytelling and Barrett’s talent burns up the page

Anne Enright, author of The Wren, The Wren

Vivid, controlled, very funny, and very moving - Barrett has the kind of pure writing chops that are vanishingly rare

Kevin Barry, author of Night Boat to Tangier

Funny, engrossing, and told with masterful technique

Funny and lyrical and a bit savage

Wild Houses is a wonder of a novel - crackling with tension and gifted with fine, strong language. Colin Barrett is a superb storyteller, and this is a tale for the ages

This nastily slow-burn chiller is shaping up to be one of the novels of the year

A brilliant novel... Wild Houses is swift, tender and honest. Barrett is one of our keenest observers of the miraculous amid the everyday and of the uncommon beauty of common things, the power of attention

Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans

Wild Houses has a rare momentum that comes from the rhythms of the sentences, the vivid descriptions and the brilliantly chosen details. The momentum emerges also from the depth and complexity of the main characters and the wide sweep of the narrative. In a small town in the west of Ireland over a few days, a whole world, memorable and edgy, is captured for the reader

Vivid and wild, funny and chilling - Wild Houses is the business

Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Colin Barrett proved with his short stories that he's not only one of the most stylistically gifted writers working now, but also one of the most generous. His first novel, Wild Houses, is deft, intricate, unique - restorative in its refusal to be anything but itself. Colin Barrett is a talent of the rarest kind

Nicole Flattery, author of Nothing Special

Wild Houses is a taut, brooding thunderstorm of a novel

Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul

Few people truly understand the deep tensions, traumas and banality of violence that can be found in small town life quite like Colin Barrett. Crime and the characters who commit it is his forte, but his writing is never less than masterful, and he sits squarely in the centre of a golden generation of new Irish writers

Benjamin Myers, author of Cuddy and The Gallow Pole

Essentially a study of manners and human behaviour dressed up as a crime novel, this rollicking tale is expertly and brilliantly told

Marie Claire, *Books to Look Out For 2024*

Barrett tells this tale with his extraordinary eye for detail, which elevated his short stories, and his lyrical talent for description

By turns raucously funny, tense and deeply affecting, it has been well worth the wait

Colin Barrett’s heartbreaker of a debut novel, Wild Houses, is set over a single weekend in the small Irish town of Ballina, in County Mayo… The lives of a small collective of mournful souls become vibrant before us, and their yearning is depicted with wistfulness, no small amount of humor and one dangerously ill-tempered goat

Wild Houses, about a bunch of wannabe gangsters in small-town Ireland, more than delivers.

A thrillingly moreish black comedy [...] There’s nothing predictable about this debut.

Tense and terrifying… the impact of much of Wild Houses…can be felt for a long time after

A darkly comic tale of claustrophobia and violence in a small Irish town, is as stellar as his feted short stories

Barrett’s expert skills in describing big events in small-town Ireland are brilliantly on show in Wild Houses. I just adored it and I’m desperate to spread the love

A witty and entertaining crime caper with a real pathos underlying it… Wild Houses is a delight to read

Violence, loyalty, loss: the debut novel by one of the sharpest young short-story writers in Ireland is a brooding tale about a local gang and a kidnapped boy. It’s unsentimental, but with an edge of wry humour throughout

As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer, Cillian English, and County Mayo's fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum. 
 
When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night he finds Doll - Cillian's teenage brother - in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins and goaded by his dead mother's dog, Dev is drawn headlong into the Ferdias' revenge fantasy. 
 
Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can't shake the feeling something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.

Colin Barrett

Praise for Wild Houses

**Sublime… Wild Houses is a thrillingly moreish novel with some of the sharpest dialogue I’ve read in any recent debut and characters who held me captive until the very last page**

A delicate and beautiful book about the lives of lonely people... **Page after faultless page, Wild Houses is a sheer joy to read... Colin Barrett's the real deal, but then we knew that already**

So consistently witty and inventive that one struggles to think of recent novels that could stand up to comparison

**Sublime… Wild Houses is a thrillingly moreish novel with some of the sharpest dialogue I’ve read in any recent debut and characters who held me captive until the very last page**

A delicate and beautiful book about the lives of lonely people... **Page after faultless page, Wild Houses is a sheer joy to read... Colin Barrett's the real deal, but then we knew that already**

So consistently witty and inventive that one struggles to think of recent novels that could stand up to comparison

**Sublime… Wild Houses is a thrillingly moreish novel with some of the sharpest dialogue I’ve read in any recent debut and characters who held me captive until the very last page**

A delicate and beautiful book about the lives of lonely people... **Page after faultless page, Wild Houses is a sheer joy to read... Colin Barrett's the real deal, but then we knew that already**

So consistently witty and inventive that one struggles to think of recent novels that could stand up to comparison

Books by Colin Barrett

Articles featuring Colin Barrett

10 must-read books by Irish authors

12 short story collections to sink into

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