A Best Book of the Year from the New York Times and Oprah Daily
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A deeply satisfying and soulful collection of eight new stories, rich with humour, melancholy, and the ever-present threat of violence and tragedy, from one of our most adored modern writers of short fiction.

“That’s the thing about Mayo County. I find it’s very presentable from a distance. It’s only up close it lets you down.”

A man calls the police to report he’s shot an attempted oil thief on his property, and a stupid one at that: who’s going to have a full tank in the middle of summer? A group of brutish brothers play the unlikely heroes to a troubled young sword-wielding man who winds up in their local pub—but only after facing off with him themselves. An aspiring poet and moderately successful cartoon pornographer ambles through a daily druggy fugue, smitten with the idea of suicide but gradually coming to terms with the sad fact that he’s not particularly interested in actually killing himself.

In Homesickness, Colin Barrett returns to the Ireland of his widely acclaimed debut book of short stories, Young Skins: a land populated by people in a perpetual struggle to determine what, if anything, they’re ultimately worth to a nation, a society, and even families defined by dynamics somewhere between hostility and indifference. In these stories, rough men disposed to rage nonetheless speak with unique poetry, and clever youths navigate and negotiate a land and life left to them in lamentable condition by their forebears.

But even at their lowest, making their worst and most desperate decisions, Barrett never stands in judgment of his characters: this is writing defined by extraordinary empathy and bottomless compassion, heart-wrenching one moment and laugh-out-loud funny the next. Together, these stories form a portrait of a place and a people at once familiar and frustrating, enchanting and enraging. In other words: they feel like home.

Colin Barrett's profile page

COLIN BARRETT was 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.”

“Homesickness is graced with an original, lingering beauty.”
—Stuart Dybek for the New York Times

“This is 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 and I think these stories are his best yet.”
—Sally Rooney

“Homesickness is a masterwork—by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, these stories shimmer. No story writer at work today thrills me more than Colin Barrett, whose characters feel immediately so familiar and true in their capacity to maim and love. What fierce, tender stories. Totally unforgettable.”
—Brandon Taylor

“Something struck me as I read these beautifully crafted, desperately sad, but often very funny stories: there is now a branch of English called Colin Barrett.”
—Roddy Doyle
“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 Tóibín

“In ‘The Ways,’ the second story in Colin Barrett’s superb second collection, every sentence is as full and alive as a sentence can be, while managing to stay ordinary. . . . In its highest style, the work fits into a tradition that moves through Kevin Barry and Marina Carr back to the epic tales of old Ireland, a mode that shifted from the heroic into the mock-heroic in the work of Joyce and Flann O’Brien. . . . A little bit grandiose, a little bit disgusting, [the] dialogue is rich, comical and full of grace notes. . . . I don’t think it is too strong to say that Barrett’s work hit an inflection point in Irish culture. . . . In each of Barrett’s styles, however, there is an utterness to his attention, a devotion to the lives of his characters, that shifts the work into some more lasting place. Barrett is already one of the leading writers of the Irish short story, which is to braggingly say, one of the leading writers of the short story anywhere. He means every word and regrets every word. He just kills it.”
—Anne Enright for the Guardian

“Homesickness may be the title of the Irish writer Colin Barrett’s second collection of stories but, with one exception, his protagonists live in the small towns and rural communities of County Mayo where they grew up. Is it possible to feel homesick even when you’re home? Is home a time as much as a place? Does a disaffection take root when you stay close to home for too long? Such questions linger in the mind after reading these eight stories, which more than deliver on the promise of Barrett’s acclaimed debut, Young Skins (2014).
Where that first collection told with panache the stories of young petty criminals in a fictional part of Ireland, Homesickness feels more grounded, in part due to its real setting, gentler pace and concern with older characters. . . . You could open Homesickness at any page and find sentences of vim and elegance, ringing dialogue (“Cats are awful eerie creatures…”) and similes to savour: a pint of Guinness with a “head on it as neat as a hotel duvet” or, a few pages later, “dozens of cows stood around in the car park, gormless as wardrobes”. . . . [“The 10”] is a subtle story to close a collection, which confirms Barrett’s position at the forefront of the golden generation of writers who have emerged from Ireland over the past decade.”
—iNews UK

“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.”
—the Tablet
“Short story collection Homesickness showcases Colin Barrett’s uncanny ear for dialogue and Irish vernacular. . . . The eight sparkling, minimally plotted tales in his latest, Homesickness (McClelland & Stewart), easily cement that early hype. Like their predecessors, they foreground humour, and their author’s uncanny ear for dialogue and Irish vernacular.”
—Globe and Mail