Say Nothing
A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Ratings103
Average rating4.5
15
A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Ratings103
Average rating4.5
“Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book — as finely paced as a novel — Keefe uses McConville’s murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga.” – New York Times Book Review, Ten Best Books of the Year
From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions
In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville’s children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress–with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
Patrick Radden Keefe’s mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past–Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.
Reviews with the most likes.
👍🏼Pick It: if U2's “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is the extent of your knowledge concerning Northern Ireland.
👎🏼Skip It: if thick ‘n' rich journalism bores you.
I initially picked Say Nothing thinking the story of the mysterious disappearance and murder of Jean McConville would coddle my true crime cravings. So by the end of Chapter 3, largely dedicating to staging the developing conflict, I felt duped...but hooked.
The Troubles?
The IRA?
The Stickies?
The What?
The Who?
Here was major period of history reading like a revelation! Never touched, mentioned nor acknowledged in any one social studies class.
Before Say Nothing, I largely type-casted History as regurgitated black-and-white events, contained in dusty books, inked to yellowing pages, shoved on forgotten shelves. This book refreshed the genre with a curiosity to learn about the world around me, over the wall, over the pond.
The magnitude of history is hardly digestible for a fifth grader during a five-month learning frame, so I don't fault my K-18 history teachers for skimming or omitting chunks of happenings. However, this book spoke to the need for writers like Keefe to revive the stories that go unsung.
Keefe's ability to give the in-depth, decades-spanning scoop on the Troubles is stunning. Because of his careful narration, I closed the book with conviction that history class is still in session and happening now.
So to be considered active participants in this world, we must pick up books like this one to develop empathy and to stay cognizant of the shifting landscapes and consequential evolutions of countries and cultures outside our own.
This book is not about the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, it is about Gerry Adams, Dolours and Marian Price, Brendan Hughes, and other big figures in the IRA and Provisional IRA. Pieces of Jean McConville's story, and that of her family, are dropped into the narrative at irregular intervals, disrupting the flow of both her story and the main story. I wish that Jean's story was separated out and made into its own book because I found it very compelling, and the story of the IRA/Provo bigwigs less so. I also didn't like how whenever a new person was introduced in the main story (IRA/Provo bigwigs story) we had to have the person's whole biography. It made for really jarring reading, taking me out of the flow of the story and into some pointless multi-page backstory, and then rushing me forward back into the flow with little more than the sense of “Ok, this guy is IRA/British secret service/other paramilitary”.
I like knowing more about Northern Ireland and the Troubles, but this book wasn't an enjoyable read.
Highly recommended. Keefe does a wonderful job of delivering an impartial account of The Troubles and the evolution of the “conflict” (as the English insist on labelling their occupation) through the stories of several key figures, notably Gerry Adams who really seems like a sociopath to me now that I understand the backstory and I get why my father disliked him..
Fabulous book! If you love true crime, then you need to grab this one!
