A review by sharonbakar
Young Skins by Colin Barrett

4.0

This is a cracking collection of stories. It took me longer to read than I anticipated - I read some of the stories months ago and put the book aside. I wasn't comfortable in the world Barrett creates, or with his characters (mostly young) leading dead-end lives in a fictional Irish town. Life's crap, violence frequent, ugliness endemic; these people have no prospects and for the most part no escape. But the writing - the writing is absolutely beautiful. Such finely crafted sentences, such careful attention to detail, imagery that staggers you. I ended up reading several of the stories twice and will undoubtedly go back to them.The story I loved most was probably technically a novella - Calm with Horses - about an ex-boxer and hired thug called Arm. Like Cormac McCarthy, Barrett can write viscerally about brutality and murder one moment, and yet there is tenderness and raw beauty a moment later.