Every One Still Here: Stories - Liadan Ní Chuinn - ★★

AUTHOR: Liadan Ní Chuinn

GENRE: Short Story Collection

PUBLICATION DATE: January 20, 2026

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A short story collection. Character-driven, introspective, mostly gloomy. Some good bits of writing here and there but on the whole, this failed to capture my attention.

As I have enjoyed whatever Irish works I read, I thought that this collection, promoted as a debut collection by an Irish writer, would be my cup of tea. [One big mistake I made here was to assume that “Irish writer” meant a writer from Ireland. I forgot about Northern Ireland, a country I know very little about. 😬] What is further intriguing is that other than that fact that the author was born in Northern Ireland in 1998, we know nothing about them. ‘Liadan Ní Chuinn’ is a pseudonym, and the writer has no publicity photos or social media presence under this identity. It is quite brave of a debut writer of literary short stories to refuse promotional mandates.

Sadly, the above made no difference to my experience of the collection.

The six stories in the book have quite plain-sounding titles. However, the content attempts to go beyond the ordinary. Each story contains a character who has been handed a tough deal by life, who is trying to move on but is dragged down by their past, who hopes for a different future but isn't aggressive about getting that desired change. As such, the stories are mostly introspective, with the main narrators often in a brooding mood. This wasn’t a major issue for me as I had expected a serious book from the blurb. The problem came in the execution of each plot.

This is a short book at just 160 pages. But as it contains only 6 stories, each narrative is of standard short-fiction length. Some of the stories contain chapters, which isn't common in this genre. I don’t mind stories having chapters, but they felt needless here except in the first story that alternates somewhat between two modes – present and flashback. The stories use either first-person or third-person, with one story being in second-person POV as well. Unfortunately, none of these except second-person made an impact. The first two stories are in first person, and both voices sounded exactly the same even though one narrator was a male character and the other, a female. The latter three stories are in third person. But the narration is so distanced in each that I couldn’t connect to any of the characters.

Some stories touch upon the impact of the British rule in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, I am minimally aware of this history and so I found myself a bit confused. I could sense the poignancy and bitterness behind the words, but without the underlying factual foundation, the impact stayed blurry.

I can't deny that the central characters in the stories are fairly complex and hence intriguing. The leads of the first three stories are especially memorable in how they handle their circumstances. Nothing feels ordinary, and yet nothing goes over the top in their recollections. If the ending of these stories worked better for me, they would have all crossed four stars easily.

The second half of the set was an entirely different matter. I simply couldn’t concentrate on the words no matter how hard I tried. The structure was also not so conducive to my reading, though I would struggle to explain why I was so disoriented. The story kept jumping across multiple feelings and it was tough to figure out what it was leading towards. It seemed like the plot was going ahead without going ahead; I don’t know how else to express this. I had to retry one story five times because I kept zoning out. Could this be because the writer is stronger at writing first-person than third-person? I am not sure. But it would be unfair to make such sweeping statements based only on a couple of stories.

As always, I rated the stories individually. But none of them crossed the three-star mark for me. The best-performing story was the first one, ‘We All Go’. With its intricate exploration of how a traumatic event that happened even before their birth affected the narrator’s life. A strong three-star read that didn’t score more only because of a feeling of repetition and an unsatisfactory ending.

Overall, I hoped to relish this collection a lot more, and still feel like there was some solid potential here. But the jumpy writing style and the lacklustre endings ensured that I found one (Northern) Irish writer whose works aren’t meant for me. I hope other readers feel differently.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and FSG Originals for providing the DRC of “Every One Still Here” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.