"Must it be the case that who one perceives a tragedy will forever depend on where one sits? The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once observed that, 'for a majority of the human species, and for tens of thousands of years, the idea that humanity includes every human being on the face of the earth does not exist at all. The designation stops at the border of each tribe, or linguistic group, sometimes even at the edge of a village.' When it came to the Troubles, a phenomenon known as "whatabout...

I married a Belfast man and was astonished and enthralled by his, and his family's, stories about the euphemistically named "Troubles". His uncle was a prison guard in Long Kesh and told how the opposing factions in jail would put on a show of aggression and enmity for camera-wielding reporters and, once they had left, go back to joking and chatting. He thought they were all idiots - "even those Orange bastards. Sure, they're no better than the other ones". His cousin was in the RUC and told of

Harrowing. I’ve always wanted a book that could describe simply and clearly what happened in Ireland during The Troubles. Not being Irish, I’ve too often felt the pall of incomprehensibility daunting me. I never found the right book, until now. Say Nothing is indeed that longed-for book. The prose is just perfectly freighted, and the reader is hoovered into the narrative maelstrom from the very first page with the mad scene of Jean McConville being torn from the arms of her huge and loving famil...

Very impressive, Radden Keefe. Very impressive, indeed.Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland is an intricate and moving piece of narrative nonfiction concerning The Troubles in the North of Ireland.It follows events, particularly centered in Belfast, beginning in 1969 through the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.Bookending Radden Keefe's extraordinary compilation of this history is the story of a mother of ten, Jean McConville, who was forcibly taken from her home in la...

I wish it weren't only February because the statement 'this is the best book I've read all year' does not carry very much weight when we still have 10 months to go. But, nonetheless, this is my reigning book of 2019. And it ended up being one of those rare cases when the book turned out so differently from what I expected, but I ended up liking it all the more for that. From the blurb I got the impression that this was going to focus on the disappearance of a woman called Jean McConville, with d...

“[A] pair of dispassionate [IRA] gunmen were sent from Belfast. Before the killing, they summoned a priest. This was not unusual: there were certain priests in that era who grew accustomed to the late-night phone call. They would be summoned outside by gruff men who were about to perform an execution and asked to deliver the last rites. The act of killing itself had a ritual character, a practiced choreography…A bag is placed over your head. Your hands are bound behind your back. You kneel in th...

The Troubles in Northern Ireland were constantly in the background as I grew up. From the age of about ten or so (in 1970) I remember constant news footage of bombed out streets, soldiers patrolling in armoured vehicles, political killings and groups of kids throwing stones at the police.Say Nothing, the award winning work by journalist Patrick Radden Keefe has added greatly to my perspective.Britain has for centuries had an uneasy and often disastrous relationship with Ireland. The seemingly un...

National Book Award nominee 2019National Book Critics Circle nominee 2019Fantastic history about The Troubles. I listened to the audiobook and was enthralled from page one. The book really gave a good historical account of Northern Island during the difficulties with Britain. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the history and getting a more balanced account of what was going on. I felt for the individuals going through all the trauma. The Sisters were so amazing. They gave so much to their countr...

Everything you have heard or read about this book is true. Say Nothing is THE nonfiction book of 2019. My review specifically will focus on my experience with the Audiobook. In Belfast, history is alive-and dangerous What compels an American journalist living in the United States to bring forth to readers the political violence that held the Irish public in a vice grip from 1916-1998? For Patrick Radden Keefe, it wasn't his 19th century Irish roots on his father's side. It was to bring to r...

“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” - Viet Thanh Nguyen.Back in school when I was selecting which subjects I wanted to progress with for A-Level, my History teacher at the time tried to convince me to continue to study History. I told him that although I loved his classes, I knew we would cover more Northern Irish history and I just couldn’t face it. I had heard enough. It didn’t feel like “history” when it was still looming over our lives -...

It took me a long time to get through this audiobook, but it was definitely worth it. I grew up in Canada hearing about the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, but I only had the vaguest idea of Irish history. Last summer, I was in the Republic of Ireland and really appreciated the vivid introduction to Irish history and culture. I seem to have caught the bug, because this summer I will be traveling to Northern Ireland. Say Nothing is a great look at some of the causes and consequences of the North’...

I couldn't finish this audiobook. I FEEL TERRIBLE. But I had a difficult time following along between the narration and the plotline. It kept jumping between the murder and then the history of Belfast. So by the time you reconnected with the murder, the details were fuzzy because you had just listened to an hour of religion versus state historical facts. Does that make sense?

Right now, the only visible sign that you've crossed the border between the United Kingdom and Ireland is the change on road signs from miles to kilometers. In the twenty-one years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed in Belfast, signaling an end to the decades-long conflict known as the 'Troubles', the checkpoints have come down, the armed border patrols have been decommissioned, the observation towers are nowhere to be seen. With Brexit looming, however, the visible division between the