Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

Acclaimed short story writer, Colin Barrett, is coming out with his debut novel, Wild Houses and I was fortunate enough to snag an Advanced copy (thank you to Grove Press). This book has been getting quite a lot of buzz in literary circles. Here is my review…

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
Publication date: March 19, 2024
Publisher: Grove Press
Rating: ★★★★.5
Order/Purchase it here: Wild Houses*

Set in the Irish town of Ballina, Wild Houses is a literary crime novel (so to speak). Small time drug dealer, Cillian English owes a significant amount of money to his former boss. His failure to repay this money leads to the kidnapping of his younger brother, “Doll”, and a series of events and violence. The novel is told from the alternating points of view of Dev Hendricks (cousin to the two kidnappers) and Nicky, Doll’s girlfriend.

Although Wild Houses centers on a crime, it’s more literary fiction than it is crime novel since the meat of the novel is centered on the exploration of small-town life, stagnation, and psychological underpinnings of growing up in a place with limited opportunities. Wild Houses is beautifully written and it’s clear that sentences are crafted with incredible precision. The descriptions of people and places were wonderful and left me with very vivid imagery of the place and the people living there.

Gabe, by contrast, was skin and bone. He was touching forty but looked ten years older again, with a face on him like a vandalized church, long and angular and pitted, eyes glinting deep in their sockets like smashed-out windows.

I really enjoyed this short novel. It made me laugh, tear up, and truly feel the sense of place and the pain of some characters. Dev’s storyline was beautifully rendered and his feeling of numbness and stagnation was heart-breaking. I found the author’s ability to portray the inner lives of his characters without sentimentality or overly dramatic passages to be rather brilliant. The matter-of-fact style leads the reader to create that emotion for themselves. Barrett doesn’t try and tug at your heartstrings but he nevertheless does leave you feeling emotionally impacted and feeling every bit of loneliness and sensation of being trapped.

…Moira Hendrick was so pervasive a presence in his life that she had assumed a kind of invisibility, in that her effects were everywhere, so reliability dispersed Dev did not need to notice or acknowledge them, the way, when you grow up, in a certain landscape, eventually you stop seeing it, because every last particle of it has been stamped upon your memory.

I loved the writing, loved the sense of atmosphere, and loved Dev’s perspective. I was less interested in Nicky’s point of view although her perspective presented a different sort of “stuckness” with which I could connect. Overall, a very solid and enjoyable read.

I’d recommend this book for those who love Irish literature and novels that evoke a sense of time and place.

Want to try it for yourself? You can order a copy here: Wild Houses*

We want to hear from you! Have you read any of Barretts short stories? Do you plan to read this book?

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