By: Nata Tombari, Nonfiction Reviewer
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe crafts a compelling narrative unraveling the web of mystery, espionage, murder, grief, and betrayal that characterized the roughly thirty-year period of history known as The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Keefe begins his narrative and ultimately uses the heart wrenching, IRA-orchestrated abduction of Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old widow and mother of ten, from her apartment in Divis Flats, a public housing project in West Belfast, in December 1972 as a microcosm of the larger sociopolitical, religious, and historical conflict between Unionists/Loyalists and republicans/Irish nationalists over the fate of Northern Ireland. Rooted in extensive scholarship, objectivity, and analysis, Patrick Radden Keefe investigates the resurrection, successes, and many shortcomings of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) amid their battles against loyalist paramilitaries and the British government. As someone who had sparse knowledge about the Troubles (mainly from the hit TV show Derry Girls), Say Nothing is an excellent primer for the uninitiated of Irish-British relations and history.
I knew I was in good hands when the epigraph was a quote from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015)—one of my favorite novels—that read “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” The main actors, if you will, of this narrative are Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes, Gerry Adams, as well as Jean McConville’s children who were forced to reconcile with the pervasive culture of silence surrounding her disappearance. Price, described as an “arrestingly beautiful young woman, with dark-red hair, flashing blue-green eyes, and pale lashes,” promptly joined the Provisional IRA (“Provos”) after her and her younger sister Marian were ambushed and attacked by Unionists at Burntollet Bridge while peacefully protesting on January 1, 1969. To say that this incident forever radicalized Dolours Price is an understatement. Despite her family’s rich heritage as proud members of the Irish Republican Army, she maintained there was another meaningful pathway to gaining rights as Catholics and republicans in Northern Ireland (the purpose of march was to protest systemic discrimination against Catholics) that didn’t involve violence, daring prison escapes, bombings, and guns.
At least, that was the case until Burntollet Bridge. Brendan Hughes, known as “The Dark” due to his “thick black eyebrows and mop of unruly black hair,” was the quick-thinking, tenacious leader of D Company and eluded British authorities for several years. Gerry Adams hailed from the same cherished republican stock as Price did, who depicted him as a “gawky fella with big, black-rimmed glasses” but simultaneously possessed a “quiet charisma” about him. Silver-tongued, Adams was the pillar and mouthpiece of the Provos in official correspondence and negotiations with the British and assumed top leadership of the IRA; however, his later refusal to associate or recognize his dealings with the IRA transformed him into a Judas figure among the resistance.
An investigative journalist by trade, Keefe synthesizes and contextualizes a panoply of primary source evidence—pamphlets, manifestos, interviews, diaries, recordings, and countless other sources— from all the belligerents to provide a robust historical foundation for those unfamiliar with Irish history. He also moves forward and backward in time for the sake of backstory and historical context, but this chronological hopscotch doesn’t affect the pacing and clarity of the narrative at all. In some respects, I found it crucial to understanding how, for example, the British army, spearheaded by Brigadier General Frank Kitson, was able to expose the stress fractures of D Company by applying the same counterinsurgency methods developed to suppress the Mau Mau rebellions in Kenya to Northern Ireland:
“Kitson realized, quality intelligence is essential, and one way to obtain that intelligence is to inveigle some members of the insurgency to switch sides.”
A lesser writer’s work would have been bogged down by the sheer amount of detail, but nothing seems out of place or irrelevant in Keefe’s narrative of the Troubles. But don’t let my approbation of Keefe’s research and analysis trick you into thinking his history lacks heart. Keefe illustrates the harrowing tale of Jean McConville’s abduction as something out of a nightmare—because it was for her children and remains so for them even as adults—without veering into sensationalism. They were further plunged into a state of poverty, crime, restlessness, and paranoia. Everyone in their apartment complex knew what happened to their mother and who was responsible—the IRA—yet no one came to their aid due to their mother’s indifference toward the republican effort. The chapter “Orphans” ends with a mysterious young man arriving at the McConville children’s doorsteps with their mother’s belongings on the night, Keefe writes, “Micheal McConville would look back and isolate that encounter as the moment he realized that his mother must be dead.”
Ultimately, Patrick Radden Keefe’s book seeks to understand the ethno-nationalist maelstrom that was The Troubles and inculcates readers with a renewed compassion and understanding of the conflict that remains heavy on the hearts of both republicans and unionists alike to this day.