Colin Walsh (2023) Kala.

Colin Walsh’s Kala is hell of a debut novel, an international bestseller. It’s rarely I’m blindsided by whodunnit as I was here.

But Kala is more than a murder-mystery set in the small fictional town of Kinlough . It’s a propping up and tearing down of what it is to by young and full of love and teenage sparring and bullshit in the endless summer of 2003, when everything is up for grabs and Kala Lanann couldn’t be more perfect, and she’s the beating heart of a group of teenagers that will live forever.

Only for Kala to disappear. Never to be found.

‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ William Faulkner’s most quoted line doesn’t end there. ‘All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.’

The past is the loose change we bring to the present. So when Kala’s body is found 15-years later, the generational trauma unpicks the past in the present with a dual timeline.

Joe, the popstar. Helen the investigative journalist and homeboy Mush, who never left Kinlough, all have their stories to tell of who Kala was and who they are now.

Wonderful storytelling. Read on.