Review: Kala by Colin Walsh
Drenched in suspense and populated with richly drawn characters, Walsh’s atmospheric thriller follows three old friends reunited in their hometown on the Irish West Coast as chilling secrets from their past start to unravel. Kala is shortlisted for the 2024 Nota Bene Prize.
A gripping literary page-turner from a rising Irish talent in which former friends, estranged for fifteen years, reckon with the terrifying events of the summer that changed their lives.
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: Helen has reluctantly returned to Ireland for her father's wedding; Joe is a world-famous musician, newly back in town; and Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the counter of his mother's cafe. But 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.
REVIEWED BY LILI JEFFERY
It’s summer 2003. Helen, Joe and Mush, three friends from the seaside town of Kinlough Ireland, meet the mysterious yet magnetic Kala. Later that year, Kala disappears without a trace. Fast forward 15 years and the now estranged group reunite, just as human remains are discovered in the woods and the disappearance of two more teenage girls wreaks havoc on the town.
It’s hard to believe this is Colin Walsh’s debut novel; it’s a complete page-turner from start to finish, despite it reaching almost 500 pages. As a reader, we jump between two timelines, enabling Walsh to capture the euphoric, reckless urgency of teenage summers that disappear in the blink of an eye whilst reminding us of the painful nostalgic memories that can keep their grip throughout adulthood.
For a novel with a large cast and multiple points of view, Walsh’s depth of characterisation is unparalleled to anything I have read in recent years. Each character is rich and real and Kinlough, the backdrop to this mystery, feels as much of a character as the humans who inhabit it. Under the veil of its sweet summer guise, dark secrets are lurking in a town where nothing stays hidden forever.
Walsh is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting talents emerging in Irish literature right now – it’s little surprise Kala won the Irish Book Award for Newcomer of the Year. I’ll be eagerly (and slightly impatiently) anticipating what he produces next!