Every One Still Here

Ní Chuinn debuts with an ambitious collection of six stories about fractured families, grief, and the shadow cast by the Troubles in Northern Ireland after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. In “We All Go,” medical student Jackie Madigan grapples with lingering grief over losing his father, Michael, to an illness when he was a child, and reflects on how his late paternal grandfather and uncle were “never the same” after they were interned by the British Army. “Russia,” the strongest of the bunch, weaves together alternating narratives of a young Russian-born museum worker who feels guilty about the way his biological sister was treated by their adoptive family. In one, he visits a psychic to confess about not looking out for her, while in the other, protestors begin leaving elliptical messages next to exhibits of ancient human remains (“You took me from my baby”; “I am somebody’s child”). The powerful closer, “Daisy Hill,” follows a widower’s struggles after losing his wife and siblings to an unspecified illness, which his nephew believes was somehow caused by the trauma of living under British military occupation. The story ends with a poignant series of descriptions of historical Irish civilians killed by the British Army. Readers will find it tough to shake these striking chronicles of intergenerational trauma. Agent: Tracy Bohan, Wylie Agency. (Jan.)