Colin Barrett’s name usually appears on those lists that get published from time to time of up and coming Irish writers. The Irish fiction scene is thriving these days, so that’s quite a tribute. I read and enjoyed one of his earlier short story collections, so I was interested to see what his debut novel, Wild Houses, would be like.

It is an enjoyable yarn set in rural Ireland (Mayo, specifically) and its community of minor criminals. What distinguished it for me was the sensitive depiction of the central character, Dev. A gentle giant, bullied at school, mourning the death of his mother and the incarceration of his father in a psychiatric hospital, Dev lives alone and isolated in the deep countryside in the family home until the local gangsters come calling. Barrett communicates with real empathy and tenderness Dev’s trauma and the passivity that is one of its main symptoms. That, for me, was what made an otherwise unremarkable novel worth the time.