Every One Still Here

Despite the short story as a narrative genre being respected and acclaimed across the globe, there’s still a widespread perception in Australia that the short story is inferior to the novel. Many readers seem to want something they can “get their teeth into” – a chewy, substantial and satisfying novel – and regard the short story as a mere appetiser or snack. Or they liken think the short story writer to a golfer who knows how to sink a putt but never manages to walk onto the green to complete the course. But as both a writer and a reader of short stories, and more recently as a bookseller, I prefer to think of the shorter genre in its own right, and in positive terms. The American writer Richard Ford has coined one my favourite metaphors in praise of the genre, describing the short story as “the highwire act of literature”: a form of writing that requires imaginative daring, strenuously acquired stylistic poise that appears effortless; effects that will dazzle and amaze an audience.

A more recent collection, published this year, is Irish writer Liadan Ní Chuinn’s Every One Still Here. The stories are all set in the aftermath of the 1998 Good Friday agreement that ostensibly brought an end to the so-called Troubles: thirty years of conflict in Northern Island between Protestants and Catholics, republican and loyalist paramilitary forces, British security forces and Irish civilians, and which claimed around 3, 500 lives. Reviewed as “brilliant,” memorable” and “an extraordinary debut,” Every One Still Here shows how people continue to struggle with the violence and division of the last 30 years of Irish history (a few years ago, walking through empty streets in Belfast, I could feel a palpable tension in the air). It’s an emotionally gripping collection, all the more so because of the use of a pared-back style. Its evocation of intergenerational trauma and continuing, often heated political differences also reminds us, in the words of William Faulkner, that “[t]he past is never dead. It’s not even past” (Requiem for a Nun). Striking, at times shocking and always utterly convincing, the stories reveal a deeply felt understanding of what it feels like to experience the grief, loss and anger of being a victim of colonial power.

My third pick is an advanced readers’ copy, due to be released in March next year. American writer Lauren Groff’s Brawler is one of the best short story collections I’ve read in years. Her nine stories range across time, from the 1950s to the present day, and create characters of different ages and from different social classes. And while they are all set in different parts of America, they speak to universal human desires and fears: our need for love, our propensity for violence, our desire to live up to our responsibility to others. I was particularly impressed by the unexpectedness of the stories. I don’t mean by this the “sting in the tail” for which writers like O. Henry and Roald Dahl were renowned. Instead, Groff’s stories rely on something much more profound than a clever plot twist; they carefully establish a set of conflicts, such that the unexpected ending feels both plausible and faintly troubling. What also distinguishes the collection is a strong sense of different voices, among them a daughter who, along with her siblings, is driven by their mother to escape a violent husband and father; a “happily” married, middle-class wife experiencing illicit sexual desire; a working-class sister who wishes to escape having to care for her disabled brother. Groff’s short stories have both an immediate emotional impact and reward re-reading to appreciate more fully their subtle layers of meaning. 

According to American writer Lorrie Moore, a novel is a marriage, while a short story is a love affair. Like a marriage, a novel is about duration and development (as well as periods of tedium and frustration), while a short story offers intensity, audacity and the frisson of uncertainty. There’s surely room for both reading experiences, without having to commit adultery.

PUBLISHER REVIEW

A young girl spends her days on a double-decker bus. A bride-to-be prays to St Valentine's bones. Bouquets are found all over a museum. Teenagers gather to dissect a human body. Brimming with compassion and thrumming with energy, these stories are scrupulous in their attention to detail, epic in their scope. In this bravura debut collection, Liadan Ni Chuinn delivers a consummate blend of the personal and the political.