PositiveThe Irish Times (IR)Colin Barrett’s short, brutal collection of stories presents clearly and without sentimentality a picture of the young Irish small-town male, in his current crisis of hopelessness and alienation ... The centrepiece of the collection is a 73-page novella, Calm With Horses. In its high-octane violence and profound nihilism, it reads like a Martin McDonagh screenplay, although it is substantially more self-aware than that writer ... The intricate and sophisticated facility with language is often a counterpoint to brutish purpose ... The stories could do with a little more leavening.
