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Homesickness

Homesickness

Summary

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From the prize-winning author of YOUNG SKINS, comes HOMESICKNESS - a quietly caustic, startlingly beautiful and wonderfully wry new short story collection.


In these eight stories, Barrett takes us back to the barren backwaters of County Mayo, via Toronto, and illuminates the lives of outcasts, misfits and malcontents with an eye for the abrupt and absurd. 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 simply lay in wake. A shooting sees an everyday call-out lead a policewoman to confront the banality of her own existence.

A true follow-up to his electrifying debut collection, HOMESICKNESS marks Colin Barrett out as our most brilliantly original and captivating storyteller.

'A mesmerisingly powerful book, full of the strangeness and beauty of life' Sally Rooney

'Addictive, stylish and violently funny... An outstanding collection' Kevin Barry

© Colin Barrett 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Reviews

  • 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
    Sally Rooney

About the author

Colin Barrett

Colin Barrett grew up in County Mayo, Ireland. His stories have been published in the Stinging Fly, Granta, Harper's and the New Yorker. His first book, the short story collection Young Skins, won the Guardian First Book Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second collection, Homesickness, made the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year and was a Book of the Year in Oprah Daily and the Irish Times.
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