Homesickness
COLIN BARRETT
(JONATHAN CAPE, 224 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • tel 020 7799 4064

Colin Barrett’s new collection of ­stories evokes the vivid scenery, social types and language of County Mayo in precise but unsentimental ways. This young Irish writer, who grew up in the county, has a great ear for its speech and a lovely way of highlighting its tragic and comic tendencies. One character wryly comments on the breathtaking vistas but sometimes unkempt and tumbledown aspects of the west of Ireland by saying: “That’s the thing about Mayo. I find it’s very presentable from a distance. It’s only up close it lets you down.” As the book continues, the homesickness of the title refers both to those who move away from, but also those who are sick of remaining at home in, this environment.