LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 BOOKER PRIZE • One of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Summer and Best Fiction of 2024 • One of the Globe and Mail's most anticipated books of 2024 • Named a Best Book of 2024 by the New York Times
From the award-winning writer of Homesickness and Young Skins, a darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and small-town secrets that won’t stay buried.
As Ballina in the west of Ireland prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer Cillian English and County Mayo's fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum.
When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night, he finds Doll—Cillian's bruised, sullen, teenage brother—in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins, goaded by his dead mother's dog, and struck by spinning lights, Dev is unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' revenge fantasy.
Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can't shake the feeling something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night, and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.
The beautifully crafted, thrillingly-told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence, Wild Houses is the long-anticipated debut novel from award-winning and critically-acclaimed short story writer, Colin Barrett.
COLIN BARRETTwas born in Canada in 1982 and grew up in County Mayo. In 2009, he was awarded the Penguin Ireland Prize. Homesickness was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, and Young Skins won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His work has been published in The New Yorker, A Public Space, Granta, and The Stinging Fly. In 2015, Barrett was named a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35.”
ISBN: 9780771051692 Format: Hardback Pages: 272 Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Published: March 19, 2024
Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize • One of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Summer and Best Fiction of 2024 • One of the Globe and Mail's most anticipated books of 2024 • Named a Best Book of 2024 by the New York Times
“[W]hen reading Barrett, one is immediately struck by a sensation best described as relief: the realisation that one is in safe hands here; this is a writer of glaringly obvious talent, operating at a seriously high level. […] Barrett’s handling of dialogue . . . is so consistently witty and inventive that one struggles to think of recent novels that could stand up to comparison. […] Wild Houses [is] a novel which proves that, in the right hands, fine lines can fill a canvas as effectively as the boldest of brushstrokes.”
—The Guardian, Book of the Day
“In Colin Barrett’s nimble hands . . . the lives of a small collective of mournful souls become vibrant before us, and their yearning is depicted with wistfulness, no small amount of humor and one dangerously ill-tempered goat.”
Canadian Read