Colin Barrett's sentences are lyrical and tough and smart, but there is something more here that makes him a really good writer. His stories are set in a familiar emotional landscape, but they give us endings that are new. What seems to be about sorrow and foreboding turns into an adventure, instead, in the tender art of the unexpected.

Language, structure, style - Colin Barrett has all the weapons at his disposal, and how, and he has an intuitive sense for what a short story is, and what it can do.

Colin Barrett is a young man in the town of the short story, but it’s fair to say he has the run of the place. This is a joyously fine collection, crackling with energy and verve, fit for the back pocket of anyone who loves a good story well told.

Magnificent...A stunning debut... The timeless nature of each story means this collection can - and will - be read many years from now.

Incredible… Human violence, beauty, brilliance of language – this book reminds you of the massive things you can do in short fiction.

Exciting and stylistically adventurous.

Should you be surprised that yet another superbly articulate and word-drunk writer has come out of Ireland? Perhaps not; but when that writer's work is as moving, as funny, as spectacularly evocative as Young Skins, you should be astonished, and amazed, and grateful. Some of the stories in this debut collection are amongst the best in the language. That a young writer possesses a talent this great is a cause for celebration, matched only by his ability to control and harness it. A minute after finishing this book I was itching to read Colin Barrett's next.

A new fabulous and forensic voice to sing out Ireland’s woes.

Colin Barrett is a writer of extraordinary gifts. I loved this compelling and utterly persuasive collection, the strongest debut I've read in some years.

[Barrett's] stories invite second readings that – the mark of really good work – seem to uncover sentences that weren't there the first time around... Throughout this extraordinary debut, but particularly in the excellent stories that bookend it, Colin Barrett is asking the right questions.

A debut short story collection that captures what it’s like to be young in rural Ireland in 2014.

The best collection we’ll read all year: a massive new talent, and stories that will make you yearn and nod and cry.

An exciting debut... Electric.

Barrett excels at scenarios rich in moral and emotional complications and his finely wrought sentences crunch and snap with hard-bitten lyricism.

Freakishly good... Barrett’s astonishingly mature stories windmill with violent abandon into our time.

How dare a debut writer be this good? Young Skins has all the hallmarks of an instant classic… His vision is sharp, his wit is sly, and the stories in this collection come alive with that ineffable thing – soul.

A triumph.

Barrett’s details shine like diamonds in a coal scuttle.

‘[Barrett] cuts across all kinds of boundaries of class and education to produce immensely tender portraits of living characters.

This is an exceptional debut, and one of the best collection of short stories that I have read in years.

An exciting debut

I don’t think I’ve ever read a better collection by somebody I had never heard of

A technically-assured collection that never disappoints