I love Colin Barrett’s short stories and I was excited to read his first novel, Wild Houses. The story revolves around two sets of brothers - the English and Ferdias and unfolds over a few days in a small town in rural Mayo during the annual Salmon Festival. Drug dealer Cillian English owes the small-town gangster Ferdia brothers cash so they kidnap Cillian’s little brother Doll to reclaim the debt.
Colin Barratt has a razor-sharp way of describing his characters and the wily, wiry characters felt a little Steinbeck. There’s Gabe, with a ‘face like a vandalised church’, and his brother Sketch, ‘a handsome unit with the slick thirty-euro hairdo of a premier league football’ also recognisable for his bomber jacket imprinted with the words, ‘Tequila Patrol’. After kidnapping Doll, they take him to an isolated farmhouse where a reclusive, grief-stricken character Dev lives. Doll is also a sharp character, described brilliantly, ‘scouring bang of aftershave crawling off him like a fog.’ Even when locked up in Dev’s dishevelled farmhouse Doll is droll. ‘Animals like me,’ he says when Dev’s dead mother’s dog takes a shine to him.
My favourite character was Nicky, Doll’s girlfriend, who carries the story and you also hope will escape this insular small world. The scene with her drunkenly walking home and climbing through a window was so beautifully described and paced and is not one that I will forget (even with my bad memory these days). It is a vivid and strangely sad novel with wonderful characters and a great setting. Let me know if you read it too.