gnu reviewed Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Say Nothing except praise for this absolute banger of a Non-Fiction
5 stars
Gerry Adams you son of a gun
paperback, 800 pages
Published Feb. 26, 2019 by Random House Large Print.
5 stars
(54 reviews)
“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 …
“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.
mictter reviewed Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Review of 'Say Nothing' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Crónica de los "Troubles" de Irlanda del Norte, deteniéndose sobre todo en una serie de personajes de la facción católica: miembros del IRA y ‘desaparecidos’ tras ejercer de soplones. Atentados, huelgas de hambre, ejecuciones y mucho odio hasta llegar a los acuerdos de Viernes Santo y a morir alcoholizados.
Al igual que en “Empire of Pain”, la huella del reportaje periodístico largo, marca de la casa New Yorker está en cada capítulo, lo cual es perfecto para el tema tratado y para el enfoque utilizado. Lectura amena que se beneficia del hecho de centrarse en unos pocos personajes y sucesos en lugar de extenderse demasiado tratando de cubrirlo todo.
yams reviewed Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Review of 'Say Nothing' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This book is excellent. It uses the disappearance of Jean McConville as a thread from which to hang the stories of former IRA members, historical context, and a lot of pain and suffering.
I found the IRA's unwelcome shift of a paramilitary organization fighting an unacknowledged war to a political party maintaining fragile, unsatisfying peace to be particularly interesting.
The bulk of this book is not about Jean McConville's disappearance and probably not a traditional 'true crime' novel. But her story and the story of her children are often brought back at the perfect moment to frame the historical narrative perfectly.
Niklas reviewed Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Review of 'Say Nothing' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
‘All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.’
– VIET THANH NGUYEN
This book did not have me hooked from the start.I’ve always been unaware of “the conflict in the North of Ireland”, or, as the book points out, “Northern Ireland”; the difference between the two terms can be—and often is—politically vast, as is everything, for example to pronounce the letter “h” as “aitch” or “haitch”.My family is partly from Yugoslavia. When that nation broke into smaller ones, and NATO tried to shell Serbia from the face of the planet, suddenly everybody I even remotely knew, whose surname contained “ic”, turned political. Mainly via their parents. And vinegar words turned into vitriol, which turned into hatred of a people, of a nation, of more nations. And all were against NATO/USA.Radden Keefe is, I suppose, denounced by a lot of people just for …
‘All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.’
– VIET THANH NGUYEN
This book did not have me hooked from the start.I’ve always been unaware of “the conflict in the North of Ireland”, or, as the book points out, “Northern Ireland”; the difference between the two terms can be—and often is—politically vast, as is everything, for example to pronounce the letter “h” as “aitch” or “haitch”.My family is partly from Yugoslavia. When that nation broke into smaller ones, and NATO tried to shell Serbia from the face of the planet, suddenly everybody I even remotely knew, whose surname contained “ic”, turned political. Mainly via their parents. And vinegar words turned into vitriol, which turned into hatred of a people, of a nation, of more nations. And all were against NATO/USA.Radden Keefe is, I suppose, denounced by a lot of people just for writing about what’s happened.I believe he is moralistic in the book. And I think he’s right in choosing sides, morally speaking. This could be because I agree with a lot of his decisions, even though he’s not steadfastly saying something’s right or wrong; he’s researched the hell out of this book and come to his own terms on a lot of things.This book is, by the way, anything other than a Wikipedia search result. Radden Keefe has spoken with many persons and uncovered truths himself. More importantly, this book is not only extremely well written and respectful—as far as that is possible, considering that some stances are held—but stylistically beautiful. The rhythms this book contains is staggeringly wondrous and radiant: it’s like truly discovering what is beautiful in jazz. The timings, the space of the book, despite the thousands of subjectively dormant facts that have been uncovered in these pages, are, simply put, a reminder of what documentary writing can be at its best.This book delves into the Troubles from different perspectives, naturally from different political ones, but also from the eyes of everyday people who lived in the Troubles.The story of Jean McConville and her family horrified me on several different levels. From the book:
Nights were especially eerie in Divis. People would turn out all their lights, so the whole vast edifice was swathed in darkness. To the McConville children, one night in particular would forever stand out. Jean had recently returned from the hospital, and there was a protracted gun battle outside the door. Then the shooting stopped and they heard a voice. ‘Help me!’ It was a man’s voice. Not local. ‘Please, God, I don’t want to die.’ It was a soldier. A British soldier. ‘Help me!’ he cried.
As her children watched, Jean McConville rose from the floor, where they had been cowering, and moved to the door. Peeking outside, she saw the soldier. He was wounded, lying in the gallery out in front. The children remember her re-entering the flat and retrieving a pillow, which she brought to the soldier. Then she comforted him, murmuring a prayer and cradling his head, before eventually creeping back into the flat.
Archie – who, with Robert in prison, was the oldest child there – admonished his mother for intervening. ‘You’re only asking for trouble,’ he said. ‘That was somebody’s son,’ she replied. The McConvilles never saw the soldier again, and to this day the children cannot say what became of him.
But when they left the flat the next morning, they found fresh graffiti daubed across their door: BRIT LOVER.
I feel that the author never tries to say that this book is an ultimate truth of sorts; the title gives that away. Radden Keefe is a great storyteller and an adept journalist.I’ll never understand the Troubles as somebody who’s lived at that time and in Northern Ireland will. A book will never provide me with even a day’s worth of anything remotely akin to that.What this book does provide, is written transcript of the lives and deaths of innocent people, the search for justice, and the search for truth. In the middle of this book, the search for truth prevails over all the deaths, those committed by the British, the IRA, Gerry Adams‘s many different lives, the clandestine testimonies by Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes, the graffitied murals of Belfast, past the funerals, the Armalites, the graves, and the searches for graves, decades past.The past might never come to rest, but when do we?We learn that silence buries truth.
Niklas reviewed Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Review of 'Say Nothing' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
‘All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.’
– VIET THANH NGUYEN
This book did not have me hooked from the start.
I’ve always been unaware of “the conflict in the North of Ireland”, or, as the book points out, “Northern Ireland”; the difference between the two terms can be—and often is—politically vast, as is everything, for example to pronounce the letter “h” as “aitch” or “haitch”.
My family is partly from Yugoslavia. When that nation broke into smaller ones, and NATO tried to shell Serbia from the face of the planet, suddenly everybody I even remotely knew, whose surname contained “ic”, turned political. Mainly via their parents. And vinegar words turned into vitriol, which turned into hatred of a people, of a nation, of more nations. And all were against NATO/USA.
Radden Keefe is, I suppose, denounced by a lot of …
‘All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.’
– VIET THANH NGUYEN
This book did not have me hooked from the start.
I’ve always been unaware of “the conflict in the North of Ireland”, or, as the book points out, “Northern Ireland”; the difference between the two terms can be—and often is—politically vast, as is everything, for example to pronounce the letter “h” as “aitch” or “haitch”.
My family is partly from Yugoslavia. When that nation broke into smaller ones, and NATO tried to shell Serbia from the face of the planet, suddenly everybody I even remotely knew, whose surname contained “ic”, turned political. Mainly via their parents. And vinegar words turned into vitriol, which turned into hatred of a people, of a nation, of more nations. And all were against NATO/USA.
Radden Keefe is, I suppose, denounced by a lot of people just for writing about what’s happened.
I believe he is moralistic in the book. And I think he’s right in choosing sides, morally speaking. This could be because I agree with a lot of his decisions, even though he’s not steadfastly saying something’s right or wrong; he’s researched the hell out of this book and come to his own terms on a lot of things.
This book is, by the way, anything other than a Wikipedia search result. Radden Keefe has spoken with many persons and uncovered truths himself. More importantly, this book is not only extremely well written and respectful—as far as that is possible, considering that some stances are held—but stylistically beautiful. The rhythms this book contains is staggeringly wondrous and radiant: it’s like truly discovering what is beautiful in jazz. The timings, the space of the book, despite the thousands of subjectively dormant facts that have been uncovered in these pages, are, simply put, a reminder of what documentary writing can be at its best.
This book delves into the Troubles from different perspectives, naturally from different political ones, but also from the eyes of everyday people who lived in the Troubles.
The story of Jean McConville and her family horrified me on several different levels. From the book:
Nights were especially eerie in Divis. People would turn out all their lights, so the whole vast edifice was swathed in darkness. To the McConville children, one night in particular would forever stand out. Jean had recently returned from the hospital, and there was a protracted gun battle outside the door. Then the shooting stopped and they heard a voice. ‘Help me!’ It was a man’s voice. Not local. ‘Please, God, I don’t want to die.’ It was a soldier. A British soldier. ‘Help me!’ he cried.
As her children watched, Jean McConville rose from the floor, where they had been cowering, and moved to the door. Peeking outside, she saw the soldier. He was wounded, lying in the gallery out in front. The children remember her re-entering the flat and retrieving a pillow, which she brought to the soldier. Then she comforted him, murmuring a prayer and cradling his head, before eventually creeping back into the flat.
Archie – who, with Robert in prison, was the oldest child there – admonished his mother for intervening. ‘You’re only asking for trouble,’ he said. ‘That was somebody’s son,’ she replied. The McConvilles never saw the soldier again, and to this day the children cannot say what became of him.
But when they left the flat the next morning, they found fresh graffiti daubed across their door: BRIT LOVER.
I feel that the author never tries to say that this book is an ultimate truth of sorts; the title gives that away. Radden Keefe is a great storyteller and an adept journalist.
I’ll never understand the Troubles as somebody who’s lived at that time and in Northern Ireland will. A book will never provide me with even a day’s worth of anything remotely akin to that.
What this book does provide, is written transcript of the lives and deaths of innocent people, the search for justice, and the search for truth. In the middle of this book, the search for truth prevails over all the deaths, those committed by the British, the IRA, Gerry Adams‘s many different lives, the clandestine testimonies by Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes, the graffitied murals of Belfast, past the funerals, the Armalites, the graves, and the searches for graves, decades past.
The past might never come to rest, but when do we?
We learn that silence buries truth.
Niklas reviewed Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Review of 'Say Nothing' on 'LibraryThing'
5 stars
âAll wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.â
â VIET THANH NGUYEN
This book did not have me hooked from the start.Iâve always been unaware of âthe conflict in the North of Irelandâ, or, as the book points out, âNorthern Irelandâ; the difference between the two terms can beâand often isâpolitically vast, as is everything, for example to pronounce the letter âhâ as âaitchâ or âhaitchâ.My family is partly from Yugoslavia. When that nation broke into smaller ones, and NATO tried to shell Serbia from the face of the planet, suddenly everybody I even remotely knew, whose surname contained âicâ, turned political. Mainly via their parents. And vinegar words turned into vitriol, which turned into hatred of a people, of a nation, of more nations. And all were against NATO/USA.Radden Keefe is, I suppose, denounced by a lot of people just for …
âAll wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.â
â VIET THANH NGUYEN
This book did not have me hooked from the start.Iâve always been unaware of âthe conflict in the North of Irelandâ, or, as the book points out, âNorthern Irelandâ; the difference between the two terms can beâand often isâpolitically vast, as is everything, for example to pronounce the letter âhâ as âaitchâ or âhaitchâ.My family is partly from Yugoslavia. When that nation broke into smaller ones, and NATO tried to shell Serbia from the face of the planet, suddenly everybody I even remotely knew, whose surname contained âicâ, turned political. Mainly via their parents. And vinegar words turned into vitriol, which turned into hatred of a people, of a nation, of more nations. And all were against NATO/USA.Radden Keefe is, I suppose, denounced by a lot of people just for writing about whatâs happened.I believe he is moralistic in the book. And I think heâs right in choosing sides, morally speaking. This could be because I agree with a lot of his decisions, even though heâs not steadfastly saying somethingâs right or wrong; heâs researched the hell out of this book and come to his own terms on a lot of things.This book is, by the way, anything other than a Wikipedia search result. Radden Keefe has spoken with many persons and uncovered truths himself. More importantly, this book is not only extremely well written and respectfulâas far as that is possible, considering that some stances are heldâbut stylistically beautiful. The rhythms this book contains is staggeringly wondrous and radiant: itâs like truly discovering what is beautiful in jazz. The timings, the space of the book, despite the thousands of subjectively dormant facts that have been uncovered in these pages, are, simply put, a reminder of what documentary writing can be at its best.This book delves into the Troubles from different perspectives, naturally from different political ones, but also from the eyes of everyday people who lived in the Troubles.The story of Jean McConville and her family horrified me on several different levels. From the book:
Nights were especially eerie in Divis. People would turn out all their lights, so the whole vast edifice was swathed in darkness. To the McConville children, one night in particular would forever stand out. Jean had recently returned from the hospital, and there was a protracted gun battle outside the door. Then the shooting stopped and they heard a voice. âHelp me!â It was a manâs voice. Not local. âPlease, God, I donât want to die.â It was a soldier. A British soldier. âHelp me!â he cried.
As her children watched, Jean McConville rose from the floor, where they had been cowering, and moved to the door. Peeking outside, she saw the soldier. He was wounded, lying in the gallery out in front. The children remember her re-entering the flat and retrieving a pillow, which she brought to the soldier. Then she comforted him, murmuring a prayer and cradling his head, before eventually creeping back into the flat.
Archie â who, with Robert in prison, was the oldest child there â admonished his mother for intervening. âYouâre only asking for trouble,â he said. âThat was somebodyâs son,â she replied. The McConvilles never saw the soldier again, and to this day the children cannot say what became of him.
But when they left the flat the next morning, they found fresh graffiti daubed across their door: BRIT LOVER.
I feel that the author never tries to say that this book is an ultimate truth of sorts; the title gives that away. Radden Keefe is a great storyteller and an adept journalist.Iâll never understand the Troubles as somebody whoâs lived at that time and in Northern Ireland will. A book will never provide me with even a dayâs worth of anything remotely akin to that.What this book does provide, is written transcript of the lives and deaths of innocent people, the search for justice, and the search for truth. In the middle of this book, the search for truth prevails over all the deaths, those committed by the British, the IRA, Gerry Adamsâs many different lives, the clandestine testimonies by Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes, the graffitied murals of Belfast, past the funerals, the Armalites, the graves, and the searches for graves, decades past.The past might never come to rest, but when do we?We learn that silence buries truth.
gimley reviewed Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Review of 'Say Nothing' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
It says everything. An amazing story beautifully told (with an Irish accent in the audio version). It not only covers the events but gives a feel for the personalities of those involved. It avoids making it about good guys and bad guys. We're all miserable sinners after all.
