Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

In 1972, Jean McConville, a widow with ten children, was taken from her home by members of the IRA and murdered. The circumstances of her death weren’t known for decades. Patrick Radden Keefe uses that case as an entry point into the full history of the Troubles—not a survey history, but an intimate one, told through the specific people involved: Dolours Price, who was among those responsible for McConville’s abduction; Gerry Adams, who denied any involvement; the Boston College oral history project that tried to preserve what participants were willing to say off the record. The book refuses to simplify morally. It takes the grievances behind the conflict seriously while also taking seriously what was done in the name of those grievances. One of the best works of narrative nonfiction of the last decade.