Book Review: Wild Houses

 By Colin Barrett

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Irish literature

• Where I bought this book: Oblong Books, Millerton, N.Y. 

• Why I bought this book: I read his previous short story collection, which was OK, so I wanted to give his first novel a try

• Bookmark used: Corner Bookstore, New York   

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   This isn't your Ireland of the green and red of Mayo, stone walls and green grass along the N-17, and hoisting up the Sam Maguire.

    No, this is the rural, small-town Ireland filled with exhilarated sadness, where the rain gets in your shoes, and life is dejected and cold.

    And all this is written by a fellow who knows his places. Barrett grew up along the River Moy, in Ballina and Foxtrot, settings for this wonderfully melancholy first novel about the lost souls of the young and old going nowhere, unsure of what they are looking for, and unwilling or unable to find it.

    It's the Ireland where beer and liquor is omnipresent, but without an opium problem, rarely a drug of choice.

He knew the pharmaceutical tastes of the average Mayoite tended away from those substances that encouraged narcosis, introversion and melancholy -- traits the natives already possessed in massive hereditary infusions -- in favour of uppers, addys and coke and speed; drugs designed to rev your pulse and blast you out of your head.

    The characters are well drawn, mostly losers and not necessarily likeable, but surprisingly able to carry the tale. The writing is knowing and sympathetic, drawing on their backgrounds and upbringings to paint a full picture of their flaws and traumas. The overall story is compelling and insightful, although little changes in their lives.

    It's as if the universe is telling us that life goes on, regardless. 

They tackled each day, which was usually just like the day before, in a spirit of inured rue.

    You start with Dev, a lonely, depressed young man bullied by his classmates, deserted by his father, who now lives alone after his mother died. Asked if it suits him to live in an isolated. decrepit old farmhouse, he shrugs. "It's just -- it's just how it ended up."

    There's Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, two hoodlums who do as their told, without knowing or caring why. There's Cillian and Doll English, small-time drug dealers who cross the bosses of the Ferdia brothers. And there's Nicky, Doll's 17-year-old girlfriend, the only one with a hint of ambition, but who allows her friends to thwart even her limited dreams.

    To round out the crew, there's an assortment of guilt-instilling Irish mothers and wayward Irish fathers.

    When the Ferdias persuade a reluctant Dev to get involved in a complicated plan of revenge against the English boys, we get character studies, tales told through pain and flashback, and some of the finest writing in Ireland today, worthy of being longlisted for the 2024 Booker prize.