Jason Furman's Reviews > Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

My recent review of Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families began “Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Among the best narrative nonfiction books I have ever read, perhaps the best.” I was not quite as excited about Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, beginning my review with the more restrained: “Wow, what a stunning book.” When it comes to Say Nothing I’m torn between four wows and six wows (the wows come on top of the five stars). I would once again say among the best narrative nonfiction books I’ve read—it was thrilling, depressing, exciting, compelling, moving, and infuriating all in one.

Say Nothing is motivated by the famous quote (misattributed to Stalin), “a single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” The tragedy at the center of this book is the IRA’s abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a widow who left behind ten children. Patrick Radden Keefe starts his book with the abduction and then comes back to its aftermath later in the book. McConville is not the only tragedy Keefe shows, he provides painful color and background on a number of different individual murders by the IRA and the authorities, including several pre-meditated IRA “executions” as well as victims of terrorist attacks, victims of the British security forces and others (perhaps none more shocking than the British security forces protecting one of their double agents from being murdered by loyalists by instead getting the loyalists to murder another man who was picked solely because of the similarity of their last names, ending the life of a completely innocent father and grandfather).

Woven throughout the narrative are a few key characters that appear again and again: Gerry Adams (the IRA leader who becomes a political leader in Sinn Féin), Brendan Hughes (a top tactician for the IRA), Dolours Price (the scion of an IRA family, she starts out on a non-violent path but ends up joining the IRA), Frank Kitson (a British general leading counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland), McConville, and her children, and a few others characters—along with many thumbnail sketches along the way.

Almost everyone is presented without judgment, with lots of nuance and multiple perspectives—with the possible exception of Gerry Adams where Keefe pays lip service to the importance of his role in peace but emotionally the core of his portrayal is much more negative, a shady character who lies about his past with the IRA.

The story moves propulsively, almost like a thrilled with numerous twists and turns. For the first two thirds of the book you don’t even realize how all of the different people will end up being tied together in ways that I won’t spoil.

It also covers a lot of history but does it lightly, interspersed and woven in, that charts the phase of non-violent resistance modeled on Martin Luther King Jr. giving way to violence and then joining with a political struggle and finally turning into a pure political struggle—all juxtaposed against the deepening involvement of the British who sent troops, established internment camps, engaged in torture, and allowed their informants latitude to continue committing major crimes. (The book provides a lot of context and detail for the hunger strike that killed Bobby Sands and nine other men, an event that made a huge impression on me at age 10—like it did many people around the world.)

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the way that Keefe discusses the challenges of memory and accountability. About one-third of the book takes place after the violence largely ends and it is about how people explain to themselves what they did, how they explain to each other, and whether and how they seek accountability. Northern Ireland did not have anything like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that gave amnesty in exchange for an honest accounting of past crimes. In fact, ever having been a member of the IRA remained a crime and the charges hanging over people forced them into lies and contortions, but not holding them accountable has its own problems too.

Say Nothing mostly feels like it is about the past, a violent period of intense sectarianism that is at odds with the way one thinks of Ireland, and even Northern Ireland, today. It ends with a new generation taking over, people more prosperous and less focused on sectarian divisions, but still haunted by the past—and the possible destabilization of the fragile detonate by the new borders that are being set up as a result of Brexit.

Overall, this is a work of meticulous and seemingly fair-minded reporting, great story telling, both a particular time and place but also about humans and their relationship to violence and moral questions like whether the means justify the ends, all of it done by showing not telling. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

(I listened in rapt attention to the audiobook on four long drives, it was excellently narrated by Matthew Blaney who has a strong Irish accent that adds to the atmosphere of the book.)