Kala: 'Grief...like falling in Love, is always Narcissistic'

- a novel by Collin Walsh.

I went into this with a certain idea of what it was going to be about. I was right, but also wrong. Kala isn’t just a mystery, if anything, that’s the least of what it is. It is a literary novel, with so much depth and detail given to its characters. It is a story of nostalgia, memory and an ode to growing up.

The novel follows 3+1+1+1 (6) friends, let me explain- three central characters who are all grown up now Helen, Joe & Mush. Part of an original gang of 6, the three find themselves together again at their adolescent hometown of Kinlough, Ireland, Mush having never left the place. Their other three friends- Aoife, now married with kids living elsewhere; Aidan and Katherine ‘Kala’, who disappeared on them without a trace, aged 15.

The story then sets to 15 years later, told from the perspectives of Helen, Joe and Mush, who without meaning to, uncover secrets and ‘right lies’ suffocating in the town's past and of it's resident.

At first glance, the novel is just that. A simple ‘friend goes missing, friends leave the town, years later meet again and uncover what really happened’. This novel is that, but not just that and definitely not ‘most’ that. It is a book of literature. Of the brutal cost of belonging, a tug of war between vengeance and forgiveness, of family, of redemption and despair, of the cruelty-naivety, self-absorption-vulnerability of our adolescence.

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. And to think this a debut!

What an addictive read. What a story!!