num_pages: 211
description: Making a remarkable entrance onto the Irish and UK literary scene with rave reviews in The Sunday Times and The Guardian Colin Barretts Young Skins is a stunning introduction to a singular voice in contemporary fiction.Enter the small rural town of Glanbeigh a place whose fate took a downturn with the Celtic Tiger a desolate spot where buffoonery and tension simmer and erupt and booze-sodden boredom fills the corners of every pub and nightclub. Here and in the towns beyond the young live hard and wear the scars. Amongst them theres jilted Jimmy whose best friend Tug is the terror of the town and Jimmys sole company in his search for the missing Clancy kid; Bat a lovesick soul with a face like a bowl of mashed up spuds even before Nubbin Tanseys boot kicked it in; and Arm a young and desperate criminal whose destiny is shaped when he and his partner Dympna fail to carry out a job. In each story a local voice delineates the grittiness of Irish society; unforgettable characters whose psychological complexities and unspoken yearnings are rendered through silence humor and violence.With power and originality akin to Wells Towers Everything Ravaged Everything Burned and Claire Vaye Watkins Battleborn these six short stories and one explosive novella occupy the ghostly melancholic spaces between boyhood and old age. Told in Barretts vibrant distinctive prose Young Skins is an accomplished and irreverent debut from a brilliant new writer.
language: English
title: Young Skins
publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat