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Homesickness

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Homesickness

By: Colin Barrett
Narrated by: Trevor Kaneswaran
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the prize-winning author of Young Skins, comes Homesickness—a quietly caustic, startlingly beautiful and wonderfully wry new short story collection.

In these eight stories, Barrett takes us back to the barren backwaters of County Mayo, via Toronto, and illuminates the lives of outcasts, misfits and malcontents with an eye for the abrupt and absurd. A quiet night in the neighbourhood pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive. A funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts won't simply lay in wake. A shooting sees an everyday call-out lead a policewoman to confront the banality of her own existence.

A true follow-up to his electrifying debut collection, Homesickness marks Colin Barrett out as our most brilliantly original and captivating storyteller.

©2022 Colin Barrett (P)2022 Penguin Audio Anthologies & Short Stories Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Short Stories World Literature

Critic reviews

A mesmerisingly powerful book, full of the strangeness and beauty of life. I've learned so much from Colin Barrett's work as a reader and writer...these stories are his best yet (Sally Rooney)
A masterwork - by turns hilarious and heartbreaking... What fierce, tender stories. Totally unforgettable (Brandon Taylor)
The stories in Homesickness are crafted with skill and flair. Colin Barrett anchors the work with emotional accuracy and careful delineation of character, and then, using metaphors and beautifully made sentences, he lets his narrative soar (Colm Toibin)
All stars
Most relevant
Compelling, bleak, literary short stories mostly set in contemporary Ireland. Fully deserves its place on the New york Times list of 100 notable books of 2022.

Excellent short stories

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