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    Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland
    Unavailable
    Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland
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    Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland
    Audiobook14 hours

    Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland

    Written by Patrick Radden Keefe

    Narrated by Matt Blaney

    4.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

    WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING

    ONE OF DUA LIPA'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

    ‘The best book I’ve read for a while, it’s fantastic’ John Oliver

    ‘A must read’ Gillian Flynn

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateNov 1, 2018
    ISBN9780008159283
    Unavailable
    Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland
    Author

    Patrick Radden Keefe

    Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, as well as two previous critically-acclaimed books, The Snakehead, and Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change on the origins of the Scorpions’ power ballad, which The Guardian named the #1 podcast of 2020. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He grew up in Boston and now lives in New York.

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    Reviews for Say Nothing

    4.5/5

    738 ratings55 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is an outstanding study of the way ethnic violence begins, starts, ends and the remembrance of it. I could not pause it, it’s a compulsive and stunning book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent book. This reads quickly and easily and really lets you get to know the people. This is an on-going war that we don’t pay enough attention to. An outstanding example of investigative journalism.
    • 5/5
      Best book I’ve ever ever read! What an informative book … i loved it
    • 5/5
      Very informative and gripping narrative of the personal experiences of members of the IRA during the troubles.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely fascinating! Told in a sensitive manner for all involved
    • 5/5
      As much as possible the author provides true accounts. It explains many things and was very absorbing. Provided more of an understanding personally even growing up in Scotland and the division between Protestants and Catholics.
    • 5/5
      This is a beautiful and well told story that opened my eyes to the troubles of the past! I could read this again again, it’s that’s good!
    • 4/5
      Very informative, and heart breaking. Harsh reminder of what people have had to bear
    • 4/5
      This book is a combination of history of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and an investigation into the murder of Jean McConville. It opens with the 1972 abduction of McConville, a recently widowed mother of ten children. The author then moves into the history of what is euphemistically known as the “Troubles,” when unionist and republican paramilitary forces violently opposed each other in Northern Ireland. He highlights the activities of Brendan Hughes, Dolours Price, and Gerry Adams. He covers the key events of the time, such as the Bloody Sunday, London car bombings, and hunger strikes. It is structured chronologically, moving methodically forward from 1972 to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to recent legal ramifications.

      This book reads as a narrative history interspersed with the consequences of McConville’s murder and what happened to her children. The book is informative and will appeal to anyone interested in the history of Northern Ireland. The author offers his theory of what happened to McConville and who killed her. It is a well-written piece of investigative journalism.
    • 4/5
      To say it’s been a long month would be an epic understatement. Though my lack of book reviews this month probably attests to it. I’ve still be reading, but the spark to write reviews, or do much else, has been dampened by the sheer amount of chaos at the bookstore (and in my country) this month. But the month is now over, everything has, or will hopefully, work out to make things better. The review will be less of a traditional review and more a recap of our book club meeting, which seems the better fit to me as there is no lack of reviews of Say Nothing out on the interwebs.

      We had a fascinating book club discussion this past week – we had two new members for a total of nine attendees which is a bit more than usual (there’s usually six or seven of us) and it always warms my heart that I have such a large group of regular book club members. It was also the first time we had gotten to talk to each other since the day before Thanksgiving (we don’t meet in December) and so much has happened since then. It was not lost on us all that as we were reading about the Provos (the Provisional Irish Republican Army – the Northern Ireland branch of the IRA), armed insurrection was taking place in our country as well.

      Collectively, we all approached this book with an English bias – few us of, even those in book club who lived through this time, knew much about the Troubles. Because of this, we paused halfway through the meeting and I gave everyone a mini-Irish history lesson (I studied abroad in Galway as a history major and my step-dad was a proud Irish-American whose Catholic mother detested my Presbyterian mother for no good reason). Everyone had been voicing a lack a sympathy with the plight of the IRA, which was due to the English-centric narrative of history education, even world history education, here in the States. The teacher in me couldn’t ignore the prime opportunity to enrich everyone’s historical background knowledge.

      We also discussed how deplorable Gerry Adams, former leader of the IRA who then claimed not to be involved in the organization when he became a member of parliament*, was, but then also had to admire how he realized that the only way to have actual change was to do so through official channels (such as the government) even if he found them detestable. While he brokered the peace agreement, he had skeletons in his closet, as it seems most politicians do, at least to some extent.

      *We acknowledge our knowledge of Gerry was limited to Patrick Radden Keefe’s position on him, supplemented by the interviews of Hughes and Price, and that without learning more about this time period, we cannot claim to assess his motivations without bias.

      Our discussion of Gerry branched in two different directions – one where we discussed how justified it would have been for the Native Americans to have continued to rise up against us, the thieves of their land. While we collectively agreed that we don’t condone violence, we understand how after countless generations of oppression, the frustration is too great to be contained any longer. We then delighted in how excited we all are to have a Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, who is a Native American. It finally feels like we have the right person in the position – the original caretakers of the land will be, at least to some extent, the caretakers once more.

      The second thread to come from Gerry Adams, was that of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland post-Brexit. As someone with a strong opposition to, and therefore later investment in a Brexit-EU deal (I have family and friends living in the UK), I am very interested to see how things work out going forward as a strong, supposedly non-negotiable point of the UK leaving the EU deal is that the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland remain “soft” to allow for free movement back and forth. I am curious to see if, while a Scottish Independence referendum will certainly arrive again, if a Northern Ireland one will as well, or if talks to reunite the two parts of Ireland together again will get more traction. No one else was too interested in pursuing this thought inquiry, but do intend to pay closer attention to the news coming from the two Isles in the future.

      We found the most fascinating figures in Say Anything to be the Price sisters, specifically Dolours. Dolours and her younger sister, Marian, were young adults when they were arrested at Heathrow following bombings in London that they were involved with. While in prison, the sisters claimed to be prisoners of war and demanded to be repatriated to Ireland. When the Brits refused, they went on a hunger strike and were subsequently force-fed by the British. This sparked great controversy and eventually, after suffering from eating disorders related to the strike and force feeding, the sisters were released. Dolours went on to marry a British actor in the ’80s and continued to be vocal in their support for the Irish Republicans as well as opposing the Good Friday peace agreement.

      The two sisters immediately captivated us and we discussed the radicalization of the youth in organizations around the world, which also led to a deeper discussion of terrorism – did we consider the IRA to be a terrorist organization based on our 2021 definition of terrorism? Did we consider the mob of insurrectionists on January 6th to be terrorists? On both counts, we struggled to define either as terrorism or not. It is a conversation I’m sure we will continue to come back to in coming months (we do frequently find ourselves bringing up previous books months, if not now years, after reading them).

      In the end, we didn’t find ourselves particularly enthralled with the disappearance and murder of Jean McConville, but as more as a way for Patrick Radden Keefe to bookend his story – she disappeared close to the start of the troubles and her body was found not long after the peace agreement. With every book club book, I always ask everyone where they would shelve the book in the store now, after reading it. We had it in true crime before, and decided as a group that it’s new home should be in history.
    • 5/5
      This is a fascinating, disturbing and eminently readable history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It begins with the seizing in 1972 of a seemingly harmless widow, Jean McConville, by an armed, masked posse right out of her own apartment and in front of her 10 children. Historian Patrick Radden Keefe uses this crime, and its repercussions, as the central event in his in-depth account of the events of the Troubles and the aftermath of the tragedy, as well. Keefe soon backs his lens away from the kidnapping itself to describe the bloody years and events in Belfast primarily. He takes for granted to a certain extent a knowledge of the sectarian/religious animus between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast, and the hard line in the rubble between Protestants who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom and Catholics who want the counties of the North to join the Republic of Ireland. But one of the huge strengths of the book is Keefe's practice of focusing in on some of the important individuals on the Catholic (IRA) side, showing us who they were and how they became radicalized to the extent that they were will to go to "war" (most would say terrorism) to try to drive the English out of Ireland once and for all. Of particular interest are the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian, who turned to violence after a peace march they were taking part in was viciously attacked by Protestant thugs. Both end up not only in prison, but taking part in the hunger strikes that nearly cost both of them their lives. Occasionally, Keefe revisits the McConville children, their attempts to learn of their mother's fate, to stay together as a family, and then their individual often brutal journeys through the Northern Irish youth homes and orphanages. Back to the conflict, and Keefe takes inside the IRA, mostly following the Price sisters and another very high-ranking member, Brandon Hughes, another prison/hunger strike survivor, as individual acts of terrorism are planned and committed, almost never coming off entirely as conceived. And, of course, we see the IRA's leader (or was he?), Gerry Adams, the man who eventually turned away from terrorism to create the movement's political wing, Sinn Fein. Keefe illuminates the sense of betrayal felt by Adams' former brothers and sisters in arms by this development, and in particular Adams' insistence that he was never really an IRA member, culminating in the Good Friday Agreement between the IRA, the Loyalist Protestant forces and the British government. "What was it all for?" the surviving terrorists want to know bitterly in the face of the agreement that allows the British to remain on the island. As the violence fades, the accounting begins, including the search for answers about the IRA victims who have been "disappeared." The IRA's most commonly followed custom was to dump the bodies of those they'd executed, normally for being informants for the British (or even just for being suspected as such) or for disobeying IRA orders, on the streets as a warning to others. But there had been a small number, only 10 or 11 all told, who had been "disappeared," surreptitiously executed and buried in remote locations, never to be spoken of again. Even asking about these people's fates could get you killed. Had Jean McConville been one of these? And if so, why, and by whom? It turns out that the story of the post-Troubles accounting and unburdening is almost as fascinating, as presented by Keefe, as the story of the bloody years of the Troubles. Keefe also takes us, to a lesser extent, inside the British Army hierarchy in Northern Ireland, and shows us the British attempts to infiltrate the IRA organization, and the counter-espionage steps taken by both sides. If there is anything lacking in the comprehensive picture Keefe provides, it stems from the fact that, as he describes the most violent years of the Troubles, he spends most of his time with the higher echelons of the IRA, with those who plan and carry out high-level operations and create the policies and strategies that were followed. To get at the horrifying claustrophobic and terror-laden daily life in Belfast during these years, I think one need to turn to fiction, or perhaps to other memoirs/histories that I haven't learned of. So, for example, a novel like [Milkman] or even the thriller, [The Ghosts of Belfast], give us a stronger view of what life was like on the streets and in the neighborhoods than Keefe has provided here. That's not meant as a criticism of Keefe's accomplishment, here, which I consider to be enormous and extremely valuable. Also, as I mentioned at the start and want to reiterate here, Keefe is a clear and sympathetic writer, and his prose really pulls the reader along, as horrific as his subject matter often becomes.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful book. I love non-fiction that reads like fiction.

      I lived in the UK during the late 80s and early 90s, and so I was certainly aware of the situation in N. Ireland. It was interesting to see it personalized. It's a good reminder that stories we see on the news always have real live people behind them.
    • 5/5
      I thought this would be a story of a murder of a widow with 10 children. It was much more than that. It is an overview of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970's and 1980's. It tells of the IRA and its splinter groups. It tells of the foot soldiers, specifically Dolorus Price, Marian Price, and Brendan Hughes as well as the political offshoot, Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams. While the book follows Jean McConville and her family before and after her death, it also follows the others with their time in prison and their hunger strikes. It also tells of their participation (or not) in the Belfast Tapes which were kept at Boston College before being subpoenaed by the UK. We also learn of the government offering immunity for people who tell where disappeared bodies are buried. I found this interesting. I remember reading in the newspaper or seeing on the evening news about the Troubles, the bombings, the hunger strikes, and the unrest. I did not pay a lot of attention at the time. This book brought back those times, and in a lot more detail than I remember. I was fascinated by the facts and stories (recorded by the person) that were told. I especially was interested when Dolorus Price's story would weave its way through the narrative. She had the righteous indignation at the beginning. She'd follow orders and do what had to be done. But as she aged, she rethought her past and wondered if it was worth what she put into it. I thought she was more diehard than her sister Marian. By the end of the book, I think I may have been mistaken who was the diehard soldier. The information was presented. The conclusions at the end seemed plausible. I listened to the book. Martin Blaney was the narrator. He was excellent. There were times when he was really into the tale. At times there was excitement and other times anger expressed through his reading. Very well done.I'm glad I read this. It is well worth the time.
    • 5/5
      Astonishingly beautiful audio, crisp clear writing/narration despite the numbers of characters and breadth of years. And what a story. Has offered me more clarity and delineation of the issues around The Troubles than any previous read.
    • 5/5
      Well researched, avoids speculation, and surprisingly engrossing. I find this subject interesting, but I still expected it to take me awhile to work through. It got going though and I was always interested to hear about how things would play out next. Even when I'd previously already read about a specific event! I still wanted to get their take on it. The book tends to focus most on the Republicans, and in an empathetic way, but not necessarily siding with them. So it felt pretty fair. It really felt like inside access to this particular place and time, which is fascinating and captivating.

      2nd read- So I just read this days ago, but kept pondering on it and had the audiobook (which has a great Belfast accent!) so I just listened to it again at a faster speed. I had known of some of the people going in, but many of the others were more difficult to keep straight the first time I read it. It's a complicated situation! But it was much easier the second time around. I believe I caught more of the connections, and understand the events, much better now.
    • 5/5
      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..
    • 4/5
      Patrick Radden Keefe's book captures the history of the Troubles as told through the stories of the individuals involved in the events of the days from the nineteen-seventies till our current age. The narrative starts and ends with the story of a young widow named Jean McConville and her ten children. Her story provided the backbone for a series of vignettes and set pieces that held my interest from beginning to the end. It was a story of secrets and violence, both loyalty and betrayals, and events that stretched from the neighborhoods of Belfast to Boston in America and to the Houses of Parliament in London.The structure of the book with its variety of characters and interrelated events provided a sort of motion that mimicked the changes in the fortunes of the actual participants involved in these events. I enjoyed the set pieces as well as the detail of the lives of the important players with names like Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, and the Price sisters; but I also appreciated the stories, sometimes horrific, of the less well-known persons, especially the children of Jean McConville who were shuttled off to institutions after Jean was "disappeared".Whether the narrative was describing the famous bombings in London, the "hunger strikes" of the Price sisters and others, or the secret documentary "Belfast Project" at Boston College, the author seamlessly tied the incidents, events, and characters together into a riveting story that I found simply fascinating.No matter how much you may remember about these events, that is if you are of an age like mine that lived through this history as current events, I expect that you will read this history with amazement, similar to mine, at the details that the author puts on display. The book successfully portrayed many intimate moments while conveying history on a grand scale.
    • 5/5
      Going into this book, I was not entirely unfamiliar with the Troubles in that I knew it was a time period and a conflict that took place in Ireland. Beyond that however, I was entirely uninformed on the topic. I am an American and detailed Irish history is not really part of our curriculum. This book was a fascinating and devastating look at this time period and the actual individual lives that were affected by this struggle.

      Though this is not just a history of the troubles, Keefe does an excellent job familiarizing the reading with the conflict before diving into explorations of specific individual experiences. When discussing this book with my parents they talked about how they remember seeing some of the events described on the news. I was not alive during most of the events described in this book or I was very young. But, even though I did not remember any of these events actually occurring, I never felt lost or confused about the timeline of events.

      I think Keefe being an Irish-American author helped with the telling of this story as it gave him a more distanced view of the events and allowed him to tell the events and the beliefs of the Irish republicans neutrally. I am not someone who thinks that journalists or authors always need to be completely neutral in the topics they cover but when discussing such as fraught issue as the one described in this book where people will naturally disagree on on I think it's good for the author to leave their own opinions at the door. There will never be a time in which people will all agree on whether revolts or protests that involve violence are necessary. Some people will look at instances of government violence or oppression and say that the only way to reach an outcome they want is to respond with violence. Others will say violence has no place in struggles against oppression and using violence is counterproductive. By not communicating his own stance, Keefe allows readers to form opinions on the Troubles and the violence within that conflict for themselves.

      I think this book is an excellent model for nonfiction storytelling and was absolutely an incredible resource for myself to learn more about this period of Irish history.
    • 4/5
      SUBTITLE: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern IrelandFrom the book jacket: 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 at the Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the IRA was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. … Keefe’s book … 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. My reactionsI confess that while I had heard of “The Troubles” I had never really studied the causes of the conflict, nor did I closely follow the politics at play. I remember reading about bombings and noting how the London underground would be shut down due to bomb threats, but the events seemed so distant from my late teen / early adult years in America that I paid little attention. I’m so glad that my F2F book club chose this book, because I learned about not only the conflict portrayed, but perhaps a little about how a young person becomes radicalized and how festering dissatisfaction can turn from angry rhetoric to acts of terrorism. Keefe is an accomplished investigative journalist, and he certainly did his homework here. Of the book’s 443 pages, fully 90 were devoted to meticulous notes (printed in teeny tiny print) citing his sources. It was also very interesting reading about the role that the Boston College’s John J Burns Library archives played in some final conclusions.
    • 5/5
      A page-turner account of the Troubles through personal histories. The unifying theme is who killed Jean McConville, the mother of 10 taken by the IRA who never returned. Her story, what happened to her and her children, left to fend for themselves as their neighbors basically shunned them is the thread through which the story of the Troubles unfolds, weaving in more well-known figures, such as Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, and the Price sisters. Integrated in the narrative is Boston College's Belfast Project, a collection of personal stories from former paramilitaries (from both sides) that were supposed to be revealed only after the protagonists were dead.
      A very engaging read precisely because the "whatever happened to Jean McConville" gives humanity to a narrative that is otherwise quite bleak. but also integrates the depth of trauma for both victims and perpetrators.
    • 5/5
      This was a knockout of a book, a non-fiction with enough elements of a mystery novel that I kept reading well past bedtime. I knew very little about the Irish Troubles, and that complicated history, full of betrayals and double agents and factions, could have been frustratingly bewildering. What I appreciated was the way Keefe organized the book around a central crime--the abduction and murder by the IRA of a supposed "informer" named Jean McConville--that involved a variety of actors, for Keefe then threaded their stories/biographies along the main one. Managing multiple subplots is not easy to do, but this was done deftly, in a way that made the material accessible. I also appreciated the historical context Keefe sketches ... dating all the way back to the Norman raiders of the 12thC and, in the 16thC, Henry VIII and the Catholic/Protestant divide. I also appreciated the quality of the writing, which was spare and elegant and forthright. This book was one selected by the Arizona Literary Society, which is how found it; it was also chosen as one of the 10 best books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review. Highly recommend for anyone who likes readable, deeply researched history.
    • 5/5
      Really great narrative about the IRA of the 1960s-70s. the author uses the murder of a Belfast woman as the frame to hang his story on, telling the story of the IRA through those involved in Jean McConville's murder. The murder story itself is pretty thin but the author creates a vivid picture of the world it took place in, the lives and fates of those involved and more. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Troubles.
    • 5/5
      Excellent read. It fleshed out the picture I had of the troubles. What it took for a hard core group of individuals to fight the British and the RUC for 30 years. Why it happened and how it aloly stopped and what it did to the people who fought. Couldn't put it down.
    • 5/5
      Jean McConnel is disappeared, who is responsible? A story of the Irish Triubles from Bloody Sunday to the present day slowly reveals the truth and the staggering truth of the Irish civil war in North Ireland: loyalists bs unionist. At time confusing, brutal and ultimately morally suspect. Major characters are Hughes and Gerry Adams co leaders of the Provos or provisional IRA. Another story line is Delores and Marian ? Sisters who are radicalized, imprisoned and stage hunger strikes. The book made me rethink past and current political standards and how we achieve them through lies and manipulation.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting book for interesting reasons. In essence, this is a book about "The Troubles," the conflict in Northern Ireland, beginning in the latter part of the 1960s and ending, theoretically, with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, though, the book most definitely goes beyond that date in its coverage. I've heard the author speak about how he got his first interest in what he ended up writing about, because his father had taught him the value of reading the obituaries for a source of interesting stories. (My phrasing, not the author's.) He finds himself one day reading the obituary of one of the main characters in this book, and he's off to quite an adventure of investigative journalism. The author begins the book, first with a quick intro to a women of about ten children being taken by force one evening from her home -- and never seen again -- and second, with a story about a secret archive in Boston College in which law enforcement from outside America comes and takes much of it away by court order. So, dear reader, our interest is immediately peaked, and off the author goes. Certainly, there is the requisite background information about the United Kingdom and Ireland and the political no-man's-land of The Troubles that is more properly referred to as Northern Ireland. But the general background very quickly gets to be specific information about organizations, counter-organizations, city neighborhoods, country boundaries, and people passing back and forth across those boundaries, and a plethora of memorable characters, none of which are made up but all too real. In thinking back about those many players in this story, I realize there really are no extraneous parts. Small roles at one point come back to play important roles later, some times very important ones. And there really are no red herrings in this mystery theater production. It all seems to count somehow. And if that's not enough, the author has this amazing tone that he sets for the whole shebang. Utter indifference. Okay, maybe that's not quite the right terminology. Somber? No. Matter of fact? Not quite. Humorless? Oh, definitely. I could imagine the author being that guy who just happens to be on a city street corner when an accident or an incident occurs that doesn't involve the guy in the least, but he just happens to have been there and watched what happened and then is tasked with telling the authorities what he saw. And all the while, you, the reader, know that he spent hours upon hours accomplishing that "I just happened to be here and see what happened" narration. A really fascinating book for fascinating reasons.
    • 5/5
      Well written and fascinating look at The Troubles of Northern Ireland especially during the '60's and 70's. Principal members of the IRA such as the Price sisters, Delours and Marian, who barely out of their teens became terrorists, were imprisoned, endured hunger strikes, and led lives of extreme frustration. The action, Stephen Rea married Delours and is also a key player in the story. So many names that were on the news.The Protestant/Catholic divide is seen in light of the support or resistance to British rule. There's a lot of history here and a broad look at what happens when people refuse to cooperate and compromise. Gerry Adams, definitely an IRA member, who refuses to acknowledge his involvement becomes the political leader of Sinn Fein. The struggle within the IRA between different factions, the spying, the violence, the blind loyalties are all a part of this story.The story opens and ends with the kidnapping and murder of a widowed mother of ten children in Belfast. Was she an informer? Who killed her? The rule of "say nothing" remains hard fast. Also interesting was a project called the Boston Project in which Boston College held the oral histories of many of the people involved in so much of the violence. Totally fascinating book - easy to read and follow.
    • 5/5
      Say nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe, author; Matthew Blaney, narratorThis book is captivating because it reveals a piece of history concerning the conflict between Britain, the Protestants and the Catholics. It covers the time period largely from 1950 to the present. Delours Price grew up in the 50’s. Her philosophy was shaped by the interactions with family members who had been involved in the struggle for greater freedom. In 1969, the Belfast Uprising began as a demonstration demanding greater civil rights for Catholics, and was fashioned after the Martin Luther King’s marches. Delours Price was a participant. With her sister Marian, she became active in the movement, eventually participating in heinous behavior that the leaders of the cause justified. They believed they were Freedom Fighters engaging in a war and wanted to be treated as soldiers. Their loyalty and devotion to the cause was complete and unquestioned.In 1972, in Belfast, Ireland, a mother of ten children disappears after a group barges into the home and spirits her away. Although the children hoped she would return, her eldest son,16-year-old Archie, accompanies her for part of her ordeal. He knows she would not come home again. Jean’s husband, a Catholic had recently died of Cancer. She was a Protestant living among Catholics. She was judged to be a traitor to the cause. Although the children try desperately to stay together, social services eventually intervenes and separates them, placing those too young to live alone, in orphanages. Their lives are never the same. Jean’s body is not found for decades. When the members of the Revolutionary groups committed murder, they hid the evidence well. Their code of silence was sacrosanct. For most, their loyalty was eternal.The project which created the Belfast Papers, from which a good deal of the information in this book is derived, was not supposed to be revealed until all those who gave confessions about their behavior during the time of the uprisings had died. However, because of an investigation, they were subpoenaed and opened decades later, revealing those that had committed crimes and broken their silence. Now, although they had thought they were safe from punishment, many though old and no longer a threat, were caught in the web and tried. They had betrayed the cause by revealing their involvement and society would now betray them. Would their punishment be deserved so many decades later? Should the sealed, secret records have been made public? Prominent people were suddenly in the crosshairs of an investigation that could easily accuse them and convict them of murder. The most prominent accused who denied everything he was accused of, was Gerry Adams. He had risen to power holding positions in the government after his years of rebellion. Both Brendan Hughes and Delours Price fingered him as a member of the IRA, as someone who ordered the murders of many victims, but his denials were accepted.There are so many iterations of the groups of Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries or Terrorists, whichever word you choose. Sometimes the timeline and the number of groups became confusing. I would suggest a brief excursion to a library or resource that could outline the period of time and the groups involved in the fight for greater civil rights and independence from Britain. It will be up to the reader to determine whether the participants in the cause were terrorists, revolutionaries, freedom fighters, a combination of all or something in between. There will not be many neutral positions. The extensive amount of research took place over a period of four years. The author attests to the accuracy of what he has presented. It is based on interviews, records, newspaper articles, letters and more. When Boston College gave up its secret archive of confessions, it was a “treasure trove” of added facts and information. The confessions were not supposed to be revealed until all participants were deceased, but the subpoenas cancelled that contract with the participants and Brendan Hughes confession was damning. Fear raced through the community that was still alive. During the time of the conflict, the methods used to interrogate and punish those found to be double agents, working against the IRA and other iterations of the “freedom fighting” groups (Sinn Fein, Republicans, Provos), were barbaric. The British Army’s tactics were little better as they fought back against those who wanted independence. The punishments meted out by the groups were copied from those used by Hitler during the Holocaust and were barbaric. Britain and the United States, justified the use of that same kind of torture, as well, after 9/11.The history of hate existing between Protestants and Catholics, the desire of Northern Ireland to gain its independence and greater civil rights for the Catholics propelled the participants to blindly follow their leaders. Ultimately, it was with the help of the United States that a peaceful resolution was accomplished, largely ending the violence.Although the book jumps around regarding the timeline as it reveals different events and crimes, and many characters are introduced, some familiar, some unknown to the reader, at no time is there any information that seems extraneous or unnecessary, and in the end, like a well sewn garment, it is complete and of high quality.
    • 5/5
      Belfast, the IRA, the Missing, the RUC and the British Army. Something I learned that I knew far less about than I thought. Jean McConnville (missing mother of 10), Dolours Price (famed femme fatale), Kitson (British Army heavy hand), Brenden Hughes (IRA devotee), Gerry Adams (Sin Fein & IRA leader) and Boston College all play critical roles in the secrets of Belfast and what happened to those secrets. As you might suspect like all conflicts, it's terribly complicated with enough blame to go around to everyone involved from the IRA to Sin Fein to Belfast police and to the British government & military. The worrying part is that although Belfast is enjoying a level of peace today, it is sitting on a box of dry twigs with all the same organizations holding the fuel and lighter. I now understand why Brexit is such a complicated event mainly because of the Northern Ireland issue.Well written book, tremendous effort went into putting this story together in great detail and ultimately told by the people who lived through it, living through it still, only using Keefe to be their microphone.
    • 4/5
      Say Nothing is a history of The Troubles, a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland among paramilitary forces of Republicans who wanted a united Ireland, Loyalists who wished to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the British military forces, ostensibly sent to Northern Ireland to keep the peace, but instead responsible for numerous atrocities.  Keefe's narrative gives a broad overview of The Troubles and the ensuing peace process after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But he also focuses in on one incident that offers a window into the deep wounds and layers of memory of The Troubles.In December 1972, a widowed mother of ten children, Jean McConville was abducted and murdered by the Irish Republican Army. According to the IRA, McConville was an informer for the British Army or a "tout" and was "disappeared" for her offenses. Her children were separated and suffered abuse in orphanages. As adults they continued to pursue justice for their mother.Intertwined with the McConville story are the stories of two members of the IRA. Dolours Price, with her sister Marian, became a prominent IRA volunteer, partly because they were young, attractive women, who were imprisoned for their role in a bombing and participated in a lengthy hunger strike.  Brendan Hughes was an IRA commander and military strategist who organized the Bloody Friday bombings of July 21, 1972, the IRA's biggest bombing attack in Belfast. Later, Hughes lead the first of two major hunger strikes by Republican prisoners in Long Kesh prison.Another key figure in the book is Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political party associated with the IRA.  Adams is famed for his contributions to the peace process by willing to be flexible with the goals of Republican ideology.  But this book reveals that he achieved his political aims by consistently denying any involvement in the IRA in the 1970s.  Price and Hughes, both of whom claim they were ordered to commit atrocities by Adams, find a deep betrayal in how Adams washes his hands of guilt for the crimes they still struggle with.A major factor in this history is The Belfast Project, an oral history project conducted in the early 2000s by Boston College. Former members of Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries (including Price and Hughes) participated in the project under the belief that the recordings would be kept secret until after their deaths.  When the existence of the tapes became known, a legal battle ensued as UK authorities tried to use them to prosecute cold cases, including the murder of Jean McConville.Keefe is an American writer with a journalistic writing style who offers empathy (but not without judgment) for the many figures in the history.  The narrator, Matthew Blaney, lends an authentic Northern Ireland voice to the narrative.
    • 4/5
      Even through the lens of the twisted pride that the Northern Irish take in the infamy given by our sordid, often incomprehensible conflict known as the Troubles, it’s still flattering that a staff writer from The New Yorker would write this history for a broad, mainly American audience. Indeed, Say Nothing is possibly now the bestselling Troubles book ever, despite – my friends tell me – not yet being well known in the place of its setting. Patrick Radden Keefe claims only partial Irish heritage and a mere passing interest in the NI conflict prior to researching the book, yet gets to grips with the subject, in all its parochial and complex glory, remarkably well. These Northern Irish eyes were keenly focused for hints of an “American” understanding of issues far, far away in both time and place, yet Radden Keefe avoids the Brad Pitt trap and tunes both ear and voice superbly without losing third party perspective. His work is rooted in republican west Belfast, and a small sub-set of characters – both victim and perpetrator, sometimes both – through which he tells the story of the 1969-1998 strife. That’s a lot of ground to cover, and the cadence is variable. Some periods, such as the early 70s, are covered in great detail and then, with the turn of a page, a decade has passed. It is therefore important for readers otherwise casually acquainted with the Troubles to know that while Say Nothing is ambitious in scope, it leaves out much more than it includes. Loyalist paramilitarism, for example, or an acknowledgement on just how deeply unpopular the PIRA’s campaign of slaughter and economic destruction really was among both Catholic and Protestants. Brendan ‘Darkie’ Hughes and the Boston College archives are two of the threads running through the book. Those familiar with Ed Maloney’s A Secret History of the IRA and Voices from the Grave will find much familiar in both style and content.While not much new in the content, at least for those dwindling number seeped in Troubles history and culture, this is an action packed and compelling read. (The one notable exception on new content being the late allegation that Marian Price delivered the deadly shot to Jean McConville). Radden Keefe’s adaptability to the topic suggests his future projects are worth following.