WORDS LILY NÍ DHOMHNAILL

Colin Barrett’s stark debut Young Skins examines the lot of the young male in small-town Ireland with icy clarity. In the fictional town of Glenbeigh (“My town is nowhere you have been, but you know its ilk”) the striking Mayo coast becomes setting for seven tales of violence, loneliness and self-destruction. A place of stinted relationships and unfulfilled ambitions, Bord Fáilte brochure for the West of Ireland, it is not.

Although characters have names like Cuculann and Hector, the men in Young Skins are far from archetypal masculine heroes. Instead they are passive participants in their own lives, full of frustration, rage and, above all, boredom. “There is the comfort of routine in our routine,” says one example, “and also the mystery of that routine’s persistence.” When they do act they do so out of sheer desperation, and it rarely ends well. Events are played out, with noted irony, against the backdrop of a captivating countryside. One lovesick youngster observes that “the evening sun is in its picturesque throes, the sky steeped in foamy reds and pinks … The breeze has grown teeth,” he says, proceeding to vandalize his rival’s car.

The centrepiece of the collection is a 70-page novella about a tight-lipped hulk of a man nicknamed “Arm”, employed to “just sit there and be, y’know, intimidating”. When he’s not thrashing petty criminals on behalf of his drug-dealer boss, he spends time with his son Jack, a severely autistic five-year-old. Their relationship — probably the most touching in the book — serves to intensify the sense of loss when Arm goes on to destroy his life in a petty gangland quibble. Technically tidy and skillfully executed, the stories all pivot on moments of despair or crisis, in which the situation (with the arguable exception of the final story) goes from bad to worse.

But don’t let all that put you off. Barrett’s obvious joy in language keeps the book from melting into a complete puddle of gloom. The ease with which he strings words together makes for a rich register, with the loose cadence of a soft Irish lilt. Blending literary vocabulary with Irish vernacular is hardly a revolutionary technique, but not often does it produce phrases like “you know my cuntishness is as congenital as my cravenness”; or descriptions such as “He was well oiled, as we all were, looking wild and disheveled, his shirt hanging off him, buttons all burst off, Doc Martens scuffing the Formica as he whelped out a furious jig”. Dialogue is sharp and colourful, descriptions shrewd and evocative, and the desperate, desolate characters will haunt you stubbornly when you’ve finished. Not the best book for a mid-winter pick-me-up, but an absolutely worthwhile read nonetheless.

Published by Stinging Fly Press, €12.99