Paperback writers

Colin Barrett’s debut collection of short stories treads through familiar territory. Its landscape is that of contemporary small-town Ireland: a world already painted vividly by Kevin Barry, Donal Ryan and Billy Roche, among others. But Barrett is an original voice, and in jagged and unsentimental prose, he eviscerates any latent romanticism from rural Ireland. The Clancy Kid twins sexual and social desire, while in Bait, young women are ready to open their ...