Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Patrick Radden Keefe

Feb 2019 · Sold by Anchor

About this ebook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Soon to be an FX limited series streaming on HULU • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

"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

Jean McConville's 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.

Ratings and reviews

Another bigoted, poorly researched book claiming to tell the "whole truth" of the "Troubles". It doesn't, it simply glosses over the horrendous discrimination,land grab, and violence against Irish Catholics in their own land going back generations. What were the Troubles. --. England and the protestant death squads. No state sanctioned terrorism,. no IRA. The author insults the intelligence of the aware public, on the matter. Even Northern Irish protestants have apologized to the Catholic community for rendering Catholics indentured slaves on their own lands.

So there is Brexit. Maybe. And the peace of the Good Friday Agreement, cold as it is, seems in great peril. Thus, I read history of the Troubles in a week from IRA perspective. With insights attributed thru dogged research and notes of the gray haired pensioners who took up arms, struck with hunger, a while ago now. These are poor, stubborn (fanatical?) people, links in a chain they see going back generations. Will Brexit dissolve UK? unite Ireland? What were oral historians at Boston College thinking? I come away believing religious tolerance can benefit people, possibly usher in needed prosperity and I really hope Brexit doesn't screw it up.

Deserves all the praise it has received. An enlightening look at a horrible history that stays focused on the concrete and personal in a way that illuminates the "big picture" so much better than a big, fat, academic history book ever could do.

About the author

PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York, and The New York Review of Books, among others and he is a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC, and MSNBC. Patrick received the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, for his story "A Loaded Gun," was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.