There’s a certain amount of mystery surrounding the author Liadan Ní Chuinn. Apparently, the name is a pseudonym. All we know is that they were born in 1998 in Northern Ireland. Well, that and the fact that their first short story collection is a bravura piece of work. It contains six haunting and deeply moving stories which examine – among other things – grief, memory, and the bonds of both family and community. Many of the stories explore the idea that the past is never truly the past, but rather a constant palpable presence woven into the fabric of daily life, especially in regard to The Troubles. The lead story ‘We All Go’ is rooted in a working-class Irish setting, the young protagonist trying to make sense of the fact that before he was born his parents were subject to a loyalist car-jacking at gun point. The final story ‘Daisy Hill’ meanwhile dramatically shifts from a seemingly contained domestic narrative into something more political (the story culminates in an extraordinary, non-fictional indictment of British violence in Ireland; the book’s final words “nobody is ever charged” highlighting the ongoing institutional failure to hold the state accountable). The four other stories in the collection are all equally as compelling and written in stripped-back almost flat prose, the lack of sentimentality or lyrical ornamentation hitting exactly the right notes as the author fuses the personal and the political in their unflinching exploration of intergenerational trauma. RM

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