A master writer spreads his wings
The terrors in Colin Barrett's debut novel, Wild Houses, seep across the page like black mould.
Barrett, who moved to Ireland as a child, has spent more than a decade publishing short stories, but with this lithe novel, he's sure to find a wider audience. With his own distinctly Irish inflection, he writes character-driven stories in which miserable people are afforded a degree of attention their fellows will never accord them.
The action takes place during the Salmon Festival, a weeklong celebration in Ballina, County Mayo. But we enter the story out in the countryside at the funereally quiet home of Dev Hendrick. Lying on his sofa in the dark, this giant of a man could be dead for all anyone can tell, but nobody ever drops round. Although such physical and social isolation may be sapping the life out of him, it's a selling point for the local drug boss, who uses Dev's place as a holding station for “product.”
Through the night rain, a car drives up to the house. Two thugs have arrived, the Ferdia brothers. They reek of feral aggression. They've brought the latest contraband for Dev to store in his spooky basement, a terrified teenage boy, named Doll.
“I shouldn't be here,” the boy says.
The thugs just picked him up off the street to put pressure on his slick older brother, who lost thousands of euros of cocaine. The craft of Wild Houses shows a master writer spreading his wings — not for show but like the stealthy attack of a barn owl. Despite moments of violence that tear through the plot, the most arresting scenes are those of anticipated brutality, perfectly drawn vignettes that capture the lives of people caught in this deadly trade.
Barrett cleverly constructs his novel so that we learn of Doll's kidnapping immediately, while his friends and family hover for hours in a cloud of ignorance and confusion. Doll's astute girlfriend, Nicky, is pressing up against the limits of being patient in a town that offers a selection of lads who range from alcoholics to jerks. Just 17, she's essentially the only adult in the room and the novel's savvy heroine.
But the real focus of Wild House remains Dev, this gentle accomplice to a kidnapping — and possibly worse. Recollections of the bullied childhood that produced this shattered man are devastating; the portrayal of Dev's adult life is perhaps the most harrowing description of loneliness I've ever read. And I've read all the novels of Anita Brookner.
Given the pervasive gloom, the fact that these chapters spark with life — even touches of humour — may seem impossible, but it's a measure of Barrett's electric style.
Tense moments suddenly burst with flashes of absurdity or comic exasperation.
Even the asides and flashbacks hurtle the whole project forward toward a climax that feels equally tensile and poignant, like some strange cloak woven from wire and wool.