In Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing, The Troubles are explored primarily through the lens of one disappearance: that of Jean McConville, widowed mother of ten. It opens with a startling scene: Jean at home in the evening, trying to relax a little after a full day of work, when masked figures turn up demanding entrance to the apartment. McConville's children try to resist them, but Jean is taken and goes with them. She never returns home. No one will say what's happened to her. We then go back, and forward, to examine how her abduction came to take place, and what became of all the players in the drama afterwards.

There's a lot of information in here: about the origins of the Irish Republican Army and the offshoots that came into being around the time of the fighting (like the Provisional IRA, the one you're probably thinking about when you think about the IRA), the leadership of that group, the eventual rise of Sinn Fein and end of active hostilities. But just as much, it's about people. Dolours Price and her sister Marian, Brendan Hughes, and Gerry Adams from the IRA; and also Jean McConville and her family, how she might have drawn the attention of the IRA, the ways that the sudden and unexplained loss of their mother affected the children as they grew up.

I'll admit I struggled to get oriented in this book at first. I came in with very little background and a lot of the factual stuff, with often confusingly similarly named organizations and groups, is frontloaded. It was hard to get and stay engaged and I honestly found myself turning to Wikipedia quite a bit to get enough context for what I was reading to get my head around it. But once it finished with the set up and dug into the major figures tied up in the disappearing of Jean McConville, it found much more solid ground and got much more compelling. I was left with indelible impressions of Dolours, Brendan, and Gerry, figures who had been completely unknown to me beforehand.

The book prompted me to do a lot of thinking about the porousness of the line between terrorism and revolution, the astonishing power of pure conviction, and the potential of even violent people to turn over a new leaf and be a perfectly normal member of the community. That the members of the IRA thought of the violent methods through which they sought to achieve their aims as justified and that they were military rather than criminal in their killing of other people is obvious. Is this why people like Dolours were able to transition away from their former lives, because she didn't think of herself as a bad person? I always appreciate when a book is able to make me question my assumptions, and if you're interested in learning more about what happened during The Troubles, this book has a lot to offer. But do beware that the beginning is slow and may not provide enough information to really give the kind of context it's clearly looking to. ( )

ver reseñas guardadas ( )

Bloody, intense. ( )

This book is very well written and kept my interest. While there is little new here apart from some revelations late in the story and some guesswork, Radden Keefe keeps you absorbed in the villainy at work.

This is a good primer on the Civil War in Northern Ireland and a lot of detail on IRA chieftain and later peace negotiator Gerry Adams. You won’t come away liking him, I believe.

There are two stories running in parallel: the disappearance of Jean McConville, a single mother of 10 children living in a small apartment; and the adventures of Dolorous Price, a foot soldier in the IRA Provisional Army, a “Provo.”

But the core protagonists almost seem a sideshow to the larger battle when I think the author wants you to see things from the ground up. The big picture continually intrudes on the stories.

There is some attention to contemporary issues like PTSD and the abuse of children in residential homes, but these are not the main story either.

Most of the words come from the killers themselves.

For a book titled “Say Nothing” there sure is a lot of blabbing.

Plenty of blabbing and a lot of grousing about The Good Friday Agreement officially ending hostilities between Catholic and Protestants. But no debate of the Agreement on its merits.

A curious omission.

For those not in the know, Ireland struggled for its independence early in the 20th century after being a colony of the British Crown for centuries. Its majority Catholics never accepted the Reformation and the establishment of the Church of England and, as a result, suffered religious bigotry and worse from their English overlords. England eventually abandoned Southern Ireland but retained ownership of the north where the majority were Protestants loyal to the Crown.

The Agreement — there are actually several — coordinates the politics of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to the south. It guarantees that when a majority of northerners vote to join the Republic, the United Kingdom will allow it to secede.

The IRA agreed to disarm and the Protestants agreed to power-sharing. The police are reorganized and depoliticized. IRA’s political wing Sinn Fein and its leaders are given political legitimacy. And Britain agrees to remove its soldiers.

This is the background to the book and pretty important to understanding the behaviour of the combatants. It is also important for understanding how Brexit could unravel the whole thing.

The violence and dirty tricks did not completely stop with the signing if the agreements. And today’s fluid border between north and south could close again.

Toward the end of the book Keefe muses whether the culture of secrecy that pervades Irish culture accounts for the much of the political violence and much more: violence against women, sexual predation of children, violence against informants, the mentally unfit due to trauma arising from the violence itself or living conditions, and violence against other so-called accomplices of the oppressors.

And I would add one more category: substance abuse. Many of the characters in this book are obviously victims of alcohol and drug abuse. Many crimes are committed when under the influence, and suicide for many is not far behind.

We see these same factors at work in our own society through neglect, from traditions of male authority of the household, and through sheer intimidation.

A society does well to put the political grievances aside not only to halt political violence, but to allow some sunlight on our other challenges as a community. In this world, sovereignty is not enough. Whether Irish are part of Ireland or England, there are transnational challenges: the rising tide of migration for economic opportunity, to escape civil war, to escape environmental degradation, or endemic crime and corruption.

People expect a lot from their government and the institutions we rely on cost money. Participation in democracy is expensive, time consuming, and slow moving whatever your ethnic stripe. Still, people feel safer surrounded by their own. ( )

The blurb on the book led me to think this was a true crime story, but instead I learned a lot about the conflict in Northern Ireland and how the IRA operated there half a decade ago. Jean McConville's murder serves as a touchpoint around which the history, settings, and people are explained. I don't know about a "searing, utterly gripping saga" but it engaged both my interest and my emotions.

Audiobook, borrowed from my public library. Excellent narration by Matthew Blaney. ( )