Wild Houses

Vivid and wild, funny and chilling - Wild Houses is the business

Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Wild Houses has a rare momentum that comes from the rhythms of the sentences, the vivid descriptions and the brilliantly chosen details. The momentum emerges also from the depth and complexity of the main characters and the wide sweep of the narrative. In a small town in the west of Ireland over a few days, a whole world, memorable and edgy, is captured for the reader

Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn

A brilliant novel... Wild Houses is swift, tender and honest. Barrett is one of our keenest observers of the miraculous amid the everyday and of the uncommon beauty of common things, the power of attention

Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans

Wild Houses is a taut, brooding thunderstorm of a novel

Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul

Vivid, controlled, very funny, and very moving - Barrett has the kind of pure writing chops that are vanishingly rare

Kevin Barry, author of Night Boat to Tangier

Colin Barrett proved with his short stories that he's not only one of the most stylistically gifted writers working now, but also one of the most generous. His first novel, Wild Houses, is deft, intricate, unique - restorative in its refusal to be anything but itself. Colin Barrett is a talent of the rarest kind

Nicole Flattery, author of Nothing Special

This strange and beautiful novel brings to life an entire world. Wild Houses is a book not just to read but to live inside

Sally Rooney, author of Normal People

By turns raucously funny, tense and deeply affecting, it has been well worth the wait

Bookseller

Colin Barrett quietly, insistently, writes so deeply into his characters you could reach out and touch them. Wild Houses is a gift of true storytelling and Barrett’s talent burns up the page

Anne Enright, author of The Wren, The Wren

Wild Houses is a wonder of a novel - crackling with tension and gifted with fine, strong language. Colin Barrett is a superb storyteller, and this is a tale for the ages

Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

Few people truly understand the deep tensions, traumas and banality of violence that can be found in small town life quite like Colin Barrett. Crime and the characters who commit it is his forte, but his writing is never less than masterful, and he sits squarely in the centre of a golden generation of new Irish writers

Benjamin Myers, author of Cuddy and The Gallow Pole

This nastily slow-burn chiller is shaping up to be one of the novels of the year

Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2024*

After years of short stories, Barrett’s transition to the longer span of the novel is confidently done. Descriptive set pieces are linked and expanded, yet every paragraph is created with care

Financial Times

Funny, engrossing, and told with masterful technique

Daily Mail

So consistently witty and inventive that one struggles to think of recent novels that could stand up to comparison

Guardian, *Book of the Day*

Sharp and affecting, expansive and playful, Barrett has written a gorgeous novel filled with gorgeous sentences. A dream to read, and no doubt destined to be one of the novels of the year

Michael Magee, author of Close to Home

Barrett can sustain a narrative across a novel without sacrificing the panache and precision that has made him one of the most stylish fiction writers at work today. His prose is a delight from the first page

i

Barrett’s superb debut novel deepens the world of his two short-story collections… The novel has the tension of a gritty noir thriller and the comic menace of a Pinter play

New Statesman

Sublime… Wild Houses is a thrillingly moreish novel with some of the sharpest dialogue I’ve read in any recent debut and characters who held me captive until the very last page

Sunday Times

With a thrillerish intensity… Barrett expertly handles the combination of narrative-driving dialogue, exhilarating action scenes and quieter moments designed to build tension… I was unable to put Wild Houses down

Times Literary Supplement

Essentially a study of manners and human behaviour dressed up as a crime novel, this rollicking tale is expertly and brilliantly told

Marie Claire, *Books to Look Out For 2024*

Wild Houses realises life in full and without pity... A palpable sense of human eccentricity, and endurance, is always there, just beneath the surface

Daily Telegraph

A delicate and beautiful book about the lives of lonely people... Page after faultless page, Wild Houses is a sheer joy to read... Colin Barrett's the real deal, but then we knew that already

Irish Times

Barrett tells this tale with his extraordinary eye for detail, which elevated his short stories, and his lyrical talent for description

UK Press Syndication

Until now, Colin Barrett has made his name as an artist of the short story… Wild Houses is a delight, with a wider space for his talent to spread and for his acutely observed characters to linger

Spectator

You’ll love Colin Barrett’s debut novel… Barrett has a keen ear for the absurd that held me captive until the very last page

Sunday Times

Colin Barrett’s heartbreaker of a debut novel, Wild Houses, is set over a single weekend in the small Irish town of Ballina, in County Mayo… The lives of a small collective of mournful souls become vibrant before us, and their yearning is depicted with wistfulness, no small amount of humor and one dangerously ill-tempered goat

DENNIS LEHANE, New York Times

Funny and lyrical and a bit savage

Tessa Hadley, Observer, *Summer Reads of 2024*

Wild Houses, about a bunch of wannabe gangsters in small-town Ireland, more than delivers.

Lisa Allardice, Guardian

A thrillingly moreish black comedy [...] There’s nothing predictable about this debut.

Sunday Times

With two collections behind him, Barrett is well established as a master both of the short story and the sentence; his debut novel confirms and extends all his promise. Wild Houses is a propulsive, darkly comic and superlatively written account of frustration and misadventure in a small Irish town... The connections between the cast and the past tragedies that have forged them are expertly revealed in a slow-burn study of character and fate that’s also an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Violence and farce mingle in a novel that feels as sharp, funny and bitingly bittersweet as life

Booker Judges, 2024

Tense and terrifying… the impact of much of Wild Houses…can be felt for a long time after

New Internationalist

A darkly comic tale of claustrophobia and violence in a small Irish town, is as stellar as his feted short stories

Justine Jordan, Guardian, *Books of the Year*

Barrett’s expert skills in describing big events in small-town Ireland are brilliantly on show in Wild Houses. I just adored it and I’m desperate to spread the love

Kit de Waal, Guardian, *Books of the Year*

A witty and entertaining crime caper with a real pathos underlying it… Wild Houses is a delight to read

Dazed Digital, *Books of the Year*

Violence, loyalty, loss: the debut novel by one of the sharpest young short-story writers in Ireland is a brooding tale about a local gang and a kidnapped boy. It’s unsentimental, but with an edge of wry humour throughout

Daily Telegraph