Kala
by Colin Walsh
At Halloween in 2003, teenager Katherine Lanann, known as Kala, goes missing in the Irish village of Kinlough. Fifteen years later, three of Kala’s group of six once-inseparable friends meet again in their native town. There’s Mush, who has never left for the “Other Place”, but is still helping his mother out in her cafe’, nursing horrific physical and emotional scars suffered in his youth. There’s Joe, Kala’s boyfriend, who has since made it big as a rockstar and is back in Kinlough for a string of concerts. And there’s Helen, a journalist in Canada, who returns for the marriage of her father to Mush’s aunt. It seems a perfect opportunity to reconnect, reminisce and heal old wounds. But when Kala’s remains are discovered, and Mush’s teenage twin cousin’s disappear, the trio find themselves in the midst of an unexpected and unwelcome mystery.
Kala is an exciting and thrilling debut. Admittedly, and as I have commented elsewhere on this blog, the “missing person” trope has become so common, especially coupled with “coming-of-age” narratives, that it can be considered a sub-genre in its own right. But Walsh is to be given credit for crafting out of it a gripping thriller with both noir and Gothic elements. He reveals the plot’s secrets slowly and tantalisingly. The blurb’s claims that this book is a “page-turner” are spot on and although, at the end, there’s a rather unlikely pile-up of revelations, this can be forgiven in a story so engrossing.
Kala also has well-justified
literary aspirations. I particularly liked the way in which the story is told
through the three different POVs of Joe, Mush and Helen, each with its defining
style and characteristics. It is a difficult gamble, but one which Walsh pulls
off convincingly. This is a highly promising debut.
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