#Sunday Review #SayNothing #NetGalley

Author: Patrick Radden Keefe

Publisher: Doubleday

Publishing date: February 26, 2019

Wow.

I thought this was a True Crime novel about the murder of a mother of ten during the Troubles. And it is, but it’s so much more. The author provides a setting and background for the tragic narrative that is chilling and disturbing, fueled by the ruthlessness on both sides of the conflict. As much as I wanted to put it down, as it struck too close to home, I just couldn’t. The most excellent writing, the attention to detail, the stitching together of this crazy blood quilt to make a coherent whole is mesmerizing. I read so few non-fiction books, not for lack of interest but for time, and this one will stand out for me for years to come.

I remember watching Northern Ireland in the 1960s explode on our black and white television, the neighborhoods with their backyards and laundry lines, the outward charm and simplicity wracked by a war zone mentality, steeped in long held hatred between families and rivals. Ostensibly the labels are Protestants and Catholics, but it was never a religious war, a war of theology, but a tribal war against the ancient invader.

The True Crime investigative aspect is most evident toward the end of the novel, as some of the IRA members begin to age and unravel, confessions and regrets accompanying the push toward peace. A fascinating story well told.

From NetGalley

Description

“A masterful history of the Troubles. . . extraordinary. . .[Keefe] captures the complexities of a historical moment by digging deep into the lives of people on all sides of the conflict. . .As powerful as Keefe’s account of the Troubles is, it’s the aftermath that makes for a truly agonizing story. . . panoramic. . .as in the most ingenious crime stories, Keefe unveils a revelation — lying, so to speak, in plain sight — that only further complicates the moral dimensions of his tale.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

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.