Troubling Stories

People have written numerous books about the Troubles between Britain and Ireland. Including, most recently, Philip Stephens’s These Divided Isles, in which he carefully explains the disturbing conflict. And while the Troubles form the background for Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn, the six stories within the collection offer little explanation of the 30-year conflict. Instead, these narratives read like prose poems as they worm their way into the supposed consciousness of those who were born just as the conflict mostly ended. The stories are marked with molten anger and mystery.