Every One Still Here: Stories

A searching, incisive, and profound debut collection of stories about people--mothers, fathers, sons, strangers, sisters--living in the aftermath of violence.

What good is it to know what things are, what lies beneath the appearance of them? It is nothing until it is stated. It is nothing if it is not named. It is just blood, like you have never seen before. A young man studying anatomy looks at a cadaver. Flowers are found, left in bouquets, all over a museum. A mother dies, leaving a stain on the carpet: whether or not anyone acknowledges it, they know it's there.

The searching and clear-eyed stories in Every One Still Here are set in Ireland under British occupation, a place where the past, grief, and guilt thrum behind every surface and refuse to stay buried. Liadan N Chuinn is a debut writer of uncommon power, clarity, and precision, whose characters in Every One Still Here stay lodged within us long after we leave them.