Every One Still Here is the debut short story collection of an Irish writer called Liadan Ni Chuinn. I became aware of it while reading an interview with the novelist, Ali Smith, who recommended it highly. Smith is a brilliant writer, but our tastes in fiction are clearly very different because I finished the collection of six stories feeling disappointed by it and puzzled by her recommendation. There was something relentlessly grim about the stories and a uniformity of tone and emotional color in the collection as a whole that left me feeling disengaged. What can I say? Smith must have seen something I missed.