Lorena finds herself invited to the Stallworth mansion, where she develops an all-consuming crush on Jenny's father, Marcus, a scientist who studies scorpions.
Nerdy and academically brilliant Lorena and popular rich girl Jenny Stallworth are middle-schoolers who exist in different social spheres, their paths unlikely to cross if not for their teacher pairing them for a science project. This sweeping drama follows 13-year-old Lorena Saenz and a troubled scientist whose disappearance sets in motion a flawed criminal investigation that will ultimately ensnare Lorena's undocumented brother, Tony. The fates of two Sacramento families in the 1980s collide most spectacularly in All the Secrets of the World by Steve Almond ( Bad Stories Against Football). From the beginning, the threat of violence looms, but when it appears, it does so in a completely unexpected, and even moving, fashion.Ĭharacters like Barrett's may be humble, but there's nothing unimpressive about their portrayal in these thoughtful, well-wrought tales. In it, a rough-hewn trio of brothers-"shortish men with massive arses and brutally capable forearms"-whose nickname provides the story's title, arrive at a local pub for an evening of drinking.
"The Alps," one of the collection's strongest entries, is noteworthy for the way Barrett subtly toys with readers' expectations. It's only up close it lets you down." The book begins there with a literal bang in "A Shooting in Rathreedane," as Sergeant Jackie Noonan is dispatched to the scene after a petty criminal has been gravely wounded by a local farmer who claims he acted in self-defense Noonan must try to save the trespasser's life. In these eight stories, Barrett offers glimpses of an assortment of characters for whom it seems life's richest rewards will always remain just out of reach.Īll of the stories save one in Homesickness are set in County Mayo, on Ireland's west coast-a region one character describes as "very presentable from a distance. Like novelist Sally Rooney, Barrett ( Young Skins) is well-attuned to the attitudes and preoccupations of mostly younger Irish men and women, though his subjects are markedly dissimilar to the highly educated, intensely verbal characters in Rooney's work. If there is any concern about the health of the short story in the next generation of Irish writers, Colin Barrett's Homesickness: Stories, his second collection, should help put that to rest.
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