A host of short story collections photographed against a red background

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Reading lists

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

One of the Observer's Debut Novels of 2024

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

Wild Houses

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