Kindle. Prompted by Dennis Lehane's salesmanship in the New York Times. Less "a heartbreaker" than a defanged transplant of some aspects of Trainspotting to Mayo County in the west of Ireland. Much of the text gets lost in character studies and while it floats along in the mode of fun there's not much humour in it. (Much like Preston's The Borrowed Hills (2024) one of the central characters is a powerful but inert man.) I guess the schtick is to pick at the underbelly of outwardly wholesome country towns (here Ballina) but Barrett lacks the commitment of people like Irvine Welsh and David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) to go all the way or at least somewhere new or interesting. Everything suggests that you head for the exits.
Goodreads: the Booker long-listing oversold it.
