#BookReview of #KALA by Colin Walsh | @AtlanticBooks

‘We’re fifteen and it’s the summer of our lives so Kinlough is gathering itself up into the moment with us – the whole town’s pure responsive to our energies‘
– KALA

[ About KALA ]

In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They – Helen, Joe and Mush – were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot centre. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.

Now it’s fifteen years later. Human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance, and to try to stop Kinlough’s violent patterns repeating themselves once again…

Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smoulder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.

[ My Review ]

KALA by Colin Walsh was published with Atlantic July 6th and is described by Kirkus as ‘a gritty heartbreaker of a thriller… Part heartfelt coming-of-age tale, part brutal Irish noir, this is a spectacular read for Donna Tartt and Tana French fans’.

The biggest shock for me in reading KALA was that it was a debut novel. Colin Walsh’s short stories have won numerous awards where I can only assume he honed his writing skills to perfection until he felt ready to present to the world this masterful book, one that left me completely poleaxed and in a state of awe. KALA is set in a tourist town on the West Coast of Ireland and is a shocking and ofttimes brutal tale of a young girl whose path was carved out before she ever had a chance, a story about the secrets of a small town and the lengths folk will go to to keep these secrets well hidden.

Kala, Aoife, Helen, Aidan, Joe and Mush were an inseparable bunch of teenage friends. Fifteen years ago they had the world at their feet and a want to step out and explore it. Kala was the most rebellious of all, a wild child with no real guidance. She lived with her grandmother and was very much left to her own devices. Kala and her best friend Aoife were the two coolest girls in school and when Helen arrived on the scene, she became part of their gang. These three girls were always seen about town together, always living in each other’s pockets, with little respect for much around them. But they were loyal to each other…up to a point.

Aidan, Joe and Mush were an unlikely trio, all coming from very disparate backgrounds but they had their music and dreams of becoming rock stars. With the girls beside them, this gang of six needed no one else, blocking out any other noise that got in their sights. They played music, hung out, smoked and displayed typical teenage behaviour, until the day Kala disappeared.

‘Grief is like falling in love; it is always narcissistic. Some catastrophe cuts through your life and immediately you reshape the world to make this disaster the secret heartbeat of all things, the buried truth of the universe. Everything is enchanted with her now. The sun, the breeze. When I sit in the mucky mess of the garden, swiping between newspapers on my phone, Kala is in the birds in the hedge’

Kala’s disappearance had a huge impact on the friends. With no trace or clue left behind, the town of Kinlough was left shattered and the relationship between the remaining five was no longer the same. More tragedy followed and now 2018, fifteen years later, we revisit Kinlough. Helen has returned for a visit, after years living in Canada, for a wedding, and Joe, now a famous musician, has returned to work on the music venue he is after investing in. Helen and Joe tip toe around each other, with Mush still in Kinlough, having never left. At the same time human remains are found in a wooded area nearby, with everyone being brought right back to November 3rd, 2003, the day Kala Lanann disappeared.

Helen, Joe and Mush are forced to face the past but with very unexpected and particularly shocking consequences. Kinlough doesn’t reveal its secrets for free. Someone has to bear the price.

KALA is an explosive, riveting and at times savage read. Colin Walsh takes the reader into a very, very dark and menacing place that disconcerts and fascinates in equal measure. The freedom, angst and confusion of those teenage years is expertly intertwined and depicted as a wonderful glaze covering the darkness that lies beneath. The innocence of youth is a veneer for a town that is rotten to the core.

KALA is a staggering piece of work that really blew my mind. I bought a copy on a whim as I had been hearing lots of rave comments about it but little did I know what a ride I was going to go on. KALA is, as Kirkus says, ‘brutal Irish noir’, a term I haven’t seen used before but can easily see how it would apply to this novel. KALA is a very striking, impressive and immersive debut. The characters are brought to life with top-class dialogue and wonderful descriptions. Their personalities are seamlessly drawn across the two timelines and the town of Kinlough, with its scents and sounds, is easy to visualise. KALA is not for the fainthearted so do know this going in but wow, it is a mesmerising, clever and highly addictive read that leaves very little to the imagination. All the stars from me for this one, a book I highly recommend.

[ Bio ]

Colin Walsh’s short stories have won several awards including the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and the Hennessy Literary Award. In 2019 he was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year. His writing has been published in the Stinging Fly, the Irish Times and broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. KALA is his first novel. He is from Galway and lives in Belgium.