Everyone’s still here. Hard-hitting, unflinching Irish stories by a young, unforgiving writer

The name Liadan is a female name, derived from a 7th-century Irish poet and nun. It means ‘grey maiden’: in Celtic culture, grey is not associated with sadness, but with wisdom and spirituality. Debut author Ní Chuinn, whose name is Liadan, wrote the short stories in Sono ancora tutti qui – courageously published by La Nuova Frontiera in a translation by Daniela De Lorenzo – and immediately made a name for herself among critics in her own country and elsewhere for her ‘relentless, direct, incredibly fresh’ writing (as described in the Sunday Times). Born in Northern Ireland in 1998, the young writer has a face that is ‘relentless’ and as hard as the literary language in which she expresses herself. So young, she is lacking in sweetness and smiles, and her words do nothing but contemplate something grey in the sense that we give it – that is, something painful and unmanageable.

There are only a few stories in the collection – just six – framed by two deeply tragic events, recounted in "Via tutti" and "Daisy Hill". The first depicts the discovery of a birth amidst an episode of violence, which is not the result of an adverse fate, but of the environment in which the protagonist lives and develops day by day within a family that is constantly on edge, and which is therefore unable to maintain peaceful relationships either at home or outside it. For Northern Ireland remains an unredeemed land, despite the gradual peace processes, continuing to seethe under British rule, especially since Brexit has deepened the divide from the rest of Ireland by reintroducing passport checks at the borders and reinforcing the separation of the two states, divided first and foremost by religious differences: the Republic of Ireland, with its capital in Dublin, is Catholic, whilst Northern Ireland, with its capital in Belfast, is Anglican.

The merit of this book lies in bringing to life a perennial conflict that rarely makes the headlines these days – a forgotten conflict that is nevertheless renewed day after day in the wake of a wound that forms at the moment of birth. In Via tutti Jackie, the author traces his conflicts with his mother back to the realisation that, whilst she was pregnant with him, she had been unable to unfasten her seatbelt quickly enough to get out of the car when ordered to do so by the British police, who had smashed the windscreen with a hammer, injuring her face with a hundred tiny shards. He was born two days later and would feel guilty for his mother’s lack of affection for the rest of his life. Far more severe, however, was the violence inflicted by the British on the population, even though they were innocent compared to the riots and attacks against the occupiers, recounted in other stories and in particular in the last one – the most powerful and unforgettable. “They tortured us, they murdered us, and yet in the end they are the victims.”

One might argue that Liadan Ní Chuinn is biased when she describes ‘savage, incomprehensible murders’. But in the very last pages she provides a harrowing list of victims, with first and last names, almost all of them young or very young, tortured and killed in horrific ways. According to the British soldiers, they were all terrorists. According to the author of the book, no – they were unarmed civilians whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘And should they, the Irish, forgive their persecutors?’ the writer asks. But Forgiveness, she continues—attributing the entire passage to a parish priest’s homily—is deserved—perhaps because it has been sought by those who have repented—whilst Mercy is something else entirely, which “consists precisely in the fact that it is not deserved”. For this reason, she describes something far more powerful than forgiveness. But is it right to show mercy to those who have committed unforgivable sins?