If there is any concern about the health of the short story in the next generation of Irish writers, Colin Barrett's Homesickness: Stories, his second collection, should help put that to rest. Like novelist Sally Rooney, Barrett (Young Skins) is well-attuned to the attitudes and preoccupations of mostly younger Irish men and women, though his subjects are markedly dissimilar to the highly educated, intensely verbal characters in Rooney's work. In these eight stories, Barrett offers glimpses of an assortment of characters for whom it seems life's richest rewards will always remain just out of reach.
All of the stories save one in Homesickness are set in County Mayo, on Ireland's west coast--a region one character describes as "very presentable from a distance. It's only up close it lets you down." The book begins there with a literal bang in "A Shooting in Rathreedane," as Sergeant Jackie Noonan is dispatched to the scene after a petty criminal has been gravely wounded by a local farmer who claims he acted in self-defense; Noonan must try to save the trespasser's life.
"The Alps," one of the collection's strongest entries, is noteworthy for the way Barrett subtly toys with readers' expectations. In it, a rough-hewn trio of brothers--"shortish men with massive arses and brutally capable forearms"--whose nickname provides the story's title, arrive at a local pub for an evening of drinking. From the beginning, the threat of violence looms, but when it appears, it does so in a completely unexpected, and even moving, fashion.
Characters like Barrett's may be humble, but there's nothing unimpressive about their portrayal in these thoughtful, well-wrought tales. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer