Highbrow Magazine - colin barrett https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/colin-barrett en A Look at the Best Books of 2022 https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/23063-look-best-books <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 12/26/2022 - 14:07</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bestbooks2022.jpg?itok=lY5N79W6"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bestbooks2022.jpg?itok=lY5N79W6" width="384" height="480" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>As in recent years, there’s a fair amount of unanimity among reviewers as to the best fiction of 2022. Nothing wrong with that, many of these books are really good. Here’s an opportunity to spotlight a few others published this year that didn’t get all the attention they merited (and to commemorate one lasting masterpiece).</em></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Homesickness: Stories</em> by Colin Barrett</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">As in his debut story collection, <em>Young Skins</em>, this hugely talented writer once again immerses us in a remote part of the Emerald Isle, serving up characters who display <a href="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/20023-beguiling-tales-county-mayo-colin-barrett-s-homesickness" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">his signature mix of humor and melancholy</a>. Life is hard for County Mayo residents, eased only occasionally by flashes of love and warm feelings.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The prose is energetic throughout. Coffee is “black as a vinyl record.” A rookie cop has a “guileless shine coming off his forehead.” In the story, “The Ways,” a character is distinguished by “the scanty lichen of an unthriving moustache clinging to his lips.”</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"> </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The only disappointing aspect of <em>Homesickness</em><em> </em>is that, for those of us who swooned over Colin Barrett’s first book, there’s less of that irrepressible joy of discovery the second time around. New readers will likely feel the same excitement generated by the stories in <em>Young Skins.</em><em> </em>At the very least, they’ll see how a promising young writer has more than fulfilled the high expectations set by his earlier work.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2harrisbook_0.jpg" style="height:506px; width:335px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Act of Oblivion</em> by Robert Harris</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">1661. Two English officers, Colonels Goffe and Whalley, flee England after King Charles II signs the Act of Oblivion—a call to execute 59 men who 11 years earlier signed a death warrant for his father, King Charles I. Hot on the trail of these so-called “regicides” is Richard Nayler, Clerk of the Privy Council, charged with tracking them down, but especially the signatories, Whalley and Goffe.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In <em>Act of Oblivion,</em><em> </em>“real time” overtakes what could have been a more conventional story of pursuit and apprehension. Years pass. People age. Some die in obscurity, rather than at the hands of the law. Harris makes readers complicit in this passage of time; we closely follow the desperate efforts by Whalley and Goffe to evade the authorities, while we’re also caught up in the Privy Clerk’s obsessive, years-long quest to arrest them.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Robert Harris is known for writing engaging, suspenseful novels based on historical events. <em>Act of Oblivion</em><em> </em>is <a href="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/21700-manhunt-new-world-robert-harris-s-act-oblivion" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">among his best so far</a>.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/mantelbook_0.jpg" style="height:650px; width:650px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Learning to Talk: Stories</em> by Hilary Mantel</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The literary world lost a great voice in 2022, with the passing of Hilary Mantel. In her <em>Wolf Hall </em>trilogy, Mantel reinvented the code for historical fiction, transforming the hoary conventions of novels set during the reign of Henry VIII into narratives with a contemporary point of view, superbly suited to our latter-day sensibilities. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">So successful was this project that one reads <em>The Mirror &amp; the Light</em><em> </em>(the last novel in the series, coming in at a mere 700 pages) with the same page-turning fervor as <em>Wolf Hall</em><em> </em>and its successor, <em>Bring Down the Bodies</em>. Thomas Cromwell, the trilogy’s protagonist, is as fully rendered as any fictional character in modern times, and these epic works are wonderful to read from first page to last.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Mantel’s work of short fiction, <em>Learning to Talk</em> (published in the U.S. in 2022, originally in the UK in 2013) has a much narrower focus—that is, stories of a troubled Catholic childhood in the North of England in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The seven stories are all told in a first-person (mostly female) voice of an adult looking back on pivotal moments in childhood, set against an industrial backdrop and within the world of a highly unorthodox nuclear family. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">A far cry from the world of Tudor royalty, the stories in <em>Learning to Talk </em>offer further proof that Hilary Mantel was among the <a href="file:///C:/Users/My/Downloads/A%20far%20cry%20from%20the%20world%20of%20Wolf%20Hall,%20this%20story%20collection%20offers%20further%20proof%20that%20Hilary%20Mantel%20is%20among%20the%20most%20gifted%20and%20accomplished%20writers%20of%20our%20time" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">most gifted and accomplished writers of our time</a>.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/banvillebook.jpg" style="height:600px; width:406px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>The Singularities</em> by John Banville</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>The Singularities</em> by John Banville might be best suited, as some claim, for those of us so-called “John Banville completists,” but it’s no less entertaining for that. (A better place to start with this brilliant and prolific author is <em>The Book of Evidence</em> or <em>The Untouchable</em>). </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In any case, Banville is up to all kinds of literary tricks in this novel set in a decrepit house in a vaguely Irish landscape. He resuscitates a slew of characters from past novels, throwing them all together under the coy tutelage of “a godlet” who shares narrator duties with a recently released ex-murderer; the son and daughter-in-law of a great philosopher; the great philosopher’s aged mother; and the great man’s biographer. Oh, and <em>The Singularities</em> is set in some undefined future, when America has been invaded and conquered by the Dutch!. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Plot is never the reason for reading Banville; rather it’s his glorious prose—arched, sensual, self-mocking—that remains as gaudy and mischievous as ever. A magician with words.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/dallowaybook.jpg" style="height:600px; width:400px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Mrs. Dalloway</em> by Virginia Woolf (1925)</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">It’s nearly 100 years since the original publication of <em>Mrs. Dalloway</em>, Virginia Woolf’s crowning achievement. From its immortal early line, “What a lark! What a plunge!”, she describes an eventful day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, as she prepares for an evening party in her upper-class London home. The storyline moves back and forth in time, dramatizing fateful moments in the lives of Mrs. Dalloway, her friend (and would-be lover) Peter Walsh, and a shell-shocked veteran of the Great Way, Septimius Smith. Woolf masterfully captures the rich, and often tormented inner lives of these characters, while also creating an evocative portrait of postwar England. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">What comes across most vividly is the protagonist’s almost excruciatingly delicate sensibility. <em>Mrs. Dalloway </em>reads as fresh and insightful as if it had been written in 2022. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Author Bio:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Lee Polevoi, </em>Highbrow Magazine’s <em>chief book critic</em>, <em>is the author of </em></strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Gabriel-Ash-Lee-Polevoi/dp/1955062587/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1670598769&amp;sr=1-1" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong>The Confessions of Gabriel Ash</strong></a><strong><em>, a novel forthcoming in 2023 from Running Wild Press.</em></strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Image Sources:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>--</em></strong><em>Ashutosh Sonwani (<a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/string-lights-on-a-book-1791742/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">Pexels</a>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/best-books-2022" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">best books of 2022</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/best-books-7" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">best books</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hilary-mantel" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">hilary mantel</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/john-banville" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">john banville</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/robert-harris" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">robert harris</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/colin-barrett" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">colin barrett</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/authors" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">authors</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/best-books-year" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">best books of the year</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lee Polevoi</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 26 Dec 2022 19:07:06 +0000 tara 11556 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/23063-look-best-books#comments Beguiling Tales of County Mayo in Colin Barrett’s ‘Homesickness’ https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/20023-beguiling-tales-county-mayo-colin-barrett-s-homesickness <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 06/17/2022 - 11:16</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1ireland_12019-pixabay.jpg?itok=yuzYOSOB"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1ireland_12019-pixabay.jpg?itok=yuzYOSOB" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Homesickness: Stories</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>By Colin Barrett</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Grove Press</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>213 pages</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In his <a href="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10480-immersive-reading-our-year-plague" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">superb debut story collection</a>, <em>Young Skins</em> (2015), the young Irish writer Colin Barrett came out of the gate swinging, as the narrator of the opening story proclaims:</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">“My town is nowhere you have been, but you know its ilk … I am young, and the young do not number many here, but it is fair to say we have the run of the place.”</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">No such bold proclamation occurs in <em>Homesickness</em>, Barrett’s long-awaited follow-up collection. Instead, the opening story, “A Shooting in Rathreedane,” introduces us right away to Sergeant Jackie Noonan of the Ballina Garda Station as she and her “gosling,” (a rookie law enforcement officer) respond to reports of a shooting:</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">“The squad car bounced and lurched as it passed over the rattling bars of a cattle grid. Next to the motorhome there were pieces of outdoor furniture and what looked like a little fire pit dug out of the ground, empty wine bottles planted in the moat of ash ringing the pit. Scattered elsewhere in the grass were bags of feed, a stripped-down, rusted-out engine block, scraps of tarp, scraps of lumber metal piping, plastic piping, bits and bits and bits.”</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3ireland_0.jpg" style="height:535px; width:335px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In these beguiling stories, we are for the most part steadfastly situated in County Mayo, Ireland. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">As in <em>Young Skins</em>, this hugely talented writer immerses us in a remote part of the Emerald Isle, serving up (with great sympathy) characters who display his signature mix of humor and melancholy. Life is hard for County Mayo residents, eased only occasionally by flashes of love and warm feelings.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The prose is energetic throughout. Coffee is “black as a vinyl record.” The rookie cop in “A Shooting” has a “guileless shine coming off his forehead.” In the story, “The Ways,” a character is distinguished by “the scanty lichen of an unthriving moustache clinging to his lips.” </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">For Barrett, these are throw-away lines, found everywhere throughout <em>Homesickness.</em></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In “Anhedonia, Here We Come,” a budding poet named Bobby Tallis goes through a challenging day. He buys weed from a teenage girl, engages in anonymous sex with a stranger, and burns with excruciating anguish caused by the success of another younger poet. But what starts out as a day-in-the-life story ends with a possibly suicidal gesture and the faint hope of a new beginning. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">A couple of stories in <em>Homesickness</em> lack the urgency we’ve come to expect from Barrett, more “slice-of-life” than “life-altering.” But even here, there isn’t a dull page in the book. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In the strongest story, “The Alps,” we are introduced to three brothers known as the Alps:</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2ireland_ptrabtonni-pixabay.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">“They breathed coltishly through their noses and rolled their shoulders with a circumspect flourish whenever women crossed their paths. They billed themselves as tradesmen, though between them had never acquired a qualification in any particular trade. They painted, wired, plumbed, tiled, but where they excelled was in the displacement of the earth: digging holes, filling holes back in. Holes of any circumference and depth. Holes were their forte.”</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">What happens after the Alps enter the Swinford Gaels football club and encounter a sword-wielding young man is every bit as quirky and unpredictable as the author’s best work<em>. </em>Though the young man is clearly unhinged, he’s portrayed as hapless, well-meaning, and more than a little confused about the razor-sharp weapon in his hands. The story is funny, heartbreaking, and wholly absorbing, all at once.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The only disappointing aspect of <em>Homesickness </em>is simply that, for those of us who swooned over Colin Barrett’s first book, there’s less of that irrepressible joy of discovery the second time around. New readers will likely feel the same excitement generated by the stories in <em>Young Skins. </em>At the very least, they’ll see how a promising young writer has more than fulfilled the high expectations set by his earlier work.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Author Bio:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Lee Polevoi, </em>Highbrow Magazine’s<em> chief book critic, is the author of </em>The Confessions of Gabriel Ash, <em>a novel forthcoming in 2023.</em></strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Image Sources:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>--12019 (<a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/ireland-sea-ocean-waves-sunset-2530238/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">Pixabay</a>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>--Ptrabatonni (<a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/dublin-home-house-ireland-europe-4955328/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">Pixabay</a>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>--Grove Press</em></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/colin-barrett" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">colin barrett</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/homesickness" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">homesickness</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/new-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">new books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ireland" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ireland</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/books-about-ireland" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">books about ireland</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fiction</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/short-stories" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">short stories</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/grove-press" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">grove press</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lee Polevoi</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 17 Jun 2022 15:16:21 +0000 tara 11150 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/20023-beguiling-tales-county-mayo-colin-barrett-s-homesickness#comments