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

by Patrick Radden Keefe

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A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

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'Unquestionably one of the greatest literary achievements of the 21st century' Nick Hornby

From the author of Empire of Pain – a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of this terrible crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades.

In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters, presented in lyrical and unforgettable detail.

A poem by Seamus Heaney inspires the title: ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing’. By defying the culture of silence, Keefe illuminates how a close-knit society fractured; how people chose sides in a conflict and turned to violence; and how, when the shooting stopped, some ex-combatants came to look back in horror at the atrocities they had committed, while others continue to advocate violence even today.

Say Nothing deftly weaves the stories of Jean McConville and her family with those of Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA as a front-line soldier, who bombed the Old Bailey when barely out of her teens; Gerry Adams, who helped bring an end to the fighting, but denied his own IRA past; Brendan Hughes, a fearsome IRA commander who turned on Adams after the peace process and broke the IRA’s code of silence; and other indelible figures. By capturing the intrigue, the drama and the profound human cost of the Troubles, the book presents a searing chronicle of the lengths that people are willing to go to in pursuit of a political ideal, and the ways in which societies mend – or don’t – in the aftermath of a long and bloody conflict.

• ISBN13: 9780008159269
• Publish Date: 22 August 2019 (first published 1 November 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: William Collins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 528
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[Beth C.]

Ostensibly about the murder of one woman, a widowed mother of several children, the book goes into a lot of detail about what Irish call The Troubles. That time when the IRA felt like they were doing the right thing by fighting back against the British, and the Brits felt like they were doing the right thing by trying to stop them. It's a time from the past, but memories and emotions still burn strong and hot. This book discusses it all, putting the woman's death into the context of the times around her. It's a fascinating book, though I will admit I started with the audio and ended up finishing with hard copy because the narrator didn't often have a lot of...emotion...in his reading. Definitely a good book, and a fascinating look at a period of time that even had Irish Americans on this side of the pond involved.