Colin Barrett 

A Best Book of the Year from the New York Times and Oprah Daily

A New York Times Editors' Choice

A deeply satisfying and soulful collection of eight new stories, rich with humour, melancholy, and the ever-present threat of violence and tragedy, from one of our most adored modern writers of short fiction.

“That’s the thing about Mayo County. I find it’s very presentable from a distance. It’s only up close it lets you down.”

A man calls the police to report he’s shot an attempted oil thief on his property, and a stupid one at that: who’s going to have a full tank in the middle of summer? A group of brutish brothers play the unlikely heroes to a troubled young sword-wielding man who winds up in their local pub—but only after facing off with him themselves. An aspiring poet and moderately successful cartoon pornographer ambles through a daily druggy fugue, smitten with the idea of suicide but gradually coming to terms with the sad fact that he’s not particularly interested in actually killing himself.

In Homesickness, Colin Barrett returns to the Ireland of his widely acclaimed debut book of short stories, Young Skins: a land populated by people in a perpetual struggle to determine what, if anything, they’re ultimately worth to a nation, a society, and even families defined by dynamics somewhere between hostility and indifference. In these stories, rough men disposed to rage nonetheless speak with unique poetry, and clever youths navigate and negotiate a land and life left to them in lamentable condition by their forebears.

But even at their lowest, making their worst and most desperate decisions, Barrett never stands in judgment of his characters: this is writing defined by extraordinary empathy and bottomless compassion, heart-wrenching one moment and laugh-out-loud funny the next. Together, these stories form a portrait of a place and a people at once familiar and frustrating, enchanting and enraging. In other words: they feel like home.