Four Night Seas

by Niamh Mac Cabe

Set across liminal landscapes, this collection of fourteen stories from award-winning author Niamh Mac Cabe feature characters navigating emotional or existential thresholds—grieving, seeking meaning, or reconciling with the past.   

Whether it is a reclusive sculptor haunted by guilt, a lost child drawing maps in the sand, or a greyhound silently shadowing a man to a mountain lake, Mac Cabe's lyrical prose and inventive narrative structures evoke an eerie, tender intimacy.   

Rich and atmospheric, exploring themes of memory, solitude, loss, and the mysterious rhythms of nature and human connection, this collection blurs the line between the internal and external world, and invites us into spaces of beauty, melancholy and subtle transformation. Four Night Seas marks the arrival of a vital new voice in Irish writing.   

262 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 19, 2026

Reviews

[Benedict Sangster · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cerebral and heartfelt series of contemporary stories; a network of layers transfixed, in places, across multiple points; a spectrum of voices, perspectives; male, female; aloud, internal; human, animal; living, dead; a glimpse into the past from childhood to time before measure; a meditation on what is important to us to remember and the unrelenting damage of forgetting; an examination of grief both for the dead and for the living; a call and response on the dissolution and reconnection of human relationships; a demonstration, throughout, of the wholesale interference of technology in the business of living our lives.

All this and also, in many parts, to its great advantage, very funny. Well worth reading.

[Carissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I went to Ireland the owner of The Lilliput Press recommended this book and he was spot on and hit the head on the nail. Exploring many themes in her short stories it’s a wonderful and quick read. I would recommend.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highlights:
Four Night Seas
Sky an Irish
Sea Eagle Sonata
Golden Stone Territory
Sebastian

[Rochelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This was a really good mix of short stories; haunting, surreal and very atmospheric. Some were a little abstract for me and I wasn’t sure what I was meant to take from them but others I loved.