“Kala” by Colin Walsh
The West coast of Ireland in 2018 is the setting but the focus of the story are the events surrounding a group of six teenage schoolfriends in the summer of 2003 and how fifteen years later those events are still affecting the residents of Kinlough. Three of the friends are reunited after some have returned to the town for a family wedding.
The group consist of three boys, Mush, Joe and Aidan, who perform as a band of musicians. The girls are Helen, Aiofe and Kala. It is Kala’s disappearance back in the autumn of 2003 that comes to haunt Mush, Joe and Helen over this long weekend. Joe and Kala were very close, a dating couple – first love.
The story takes place from Friday through to Tuesday and is seen through the eyes of these three where we learn about their lives, how they have evolved, or not, but all are damaged by the memories of Kala. They each have recollections of seeing her just before she vanished, without trace, until her remains are discovered on a building site that very weekend. Such coincidences are what good fiction is made from – this is good fiction; indeed as the book develops so the pace of it quickens up as the mystery of Kala’s disappearance is gradually revealed.
Mush has remained in Kinlough helping his mother in her “caf”. Helen escaped leaving behind her father and younger sister, Theresa. While Helen scratches a living as a freelance journalist in Canada, Joe has prospered in America as a musician. Joe is famous, recognised wherever he goes and is investing in his home town doing up a bar; such fame has its drawbacks. The book opens with Helen arriving in town. Joe is already there staying with his parents whilst supervising the renovations of the pub. Mush is where Mush always is, serving coffees and then spending lonely evenings drinking beers. His one relief, seemingly, are his twin cousins, Donna and Marie, but Mush is physically damaged as well as traumatised after his close friendship with Kala.
The family connections are diverse and intermingled. The planned wedding is Helen’s father to Mush’s aunt, the mother of Aidan and the twins. There is a helpful index of the main characters which is needed. The complexity of these relationships are important; Aidan and Mush were cousins, each part of their family seemingly having differing lifestyles, priorities and standards.
The story unfolds, revealing the intrigues of the past, not forgotten subterfuges and how Kala’s death is influencing these families over the weekend as new dramas and possibly criminology blight the lives of each of the families involved. This is an ambitious novel not a who-or-why-dunnit; it works as a book as each strand of the storyline is linked together with the reader left understanding the sad short life of Kala.
