Say Nothing

A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland

By: Patrick Radden Keefe

Narrated by: Matt Blaney

Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2019, shortlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction 2019, a Time’s number one Best Nonfiction Book of 2019 and New York Times best-seller.

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of 10, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of this terrible crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades.

In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters, presented in lyrical and unforgettable detail.

A poem by Seamus Heaney inspires the title: 'Whatever You Say, Say Nothing'. By defying the culture of silence, Keefe illuminates how a close-knit Irish society fractured; how people chose sides in a conflict and turned to violence; and how, when the shooting stopped, some ex-combatants came to look back in horror at the atrocities they had committed, while others continue to advocate violence even today.

Say Nothing deftly weaves the stories of Jean McConville and her family with those of Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA as a front line soldier, who bombed the Old Bailey when she was barely out of her teens; Gerry Adams, who helped bring an end to the fighting but denied his own IRA past; Brendan Hughes, a fearsome IRA commander who turned on Adams after the peace process and broke the IRA's code of silence; and other indelible figures. By capturing the intrigue, the drama, and the profound human cost of the Troubles, the book presents a searing chronicle of the lengths that people are willing to go to in pursuit of a political ideal and the ways in which societies mend - or don't - in the aftermath of a long and bloody conflict.

©2018 Patrick Radden Keefe (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Smart, searching, and utterly absorbing, Say Nothing sweeps us into the heart of one of the modern world's bitterest conflicts and, with unusual compassion, walks us back out again along the road to reconciliation. This is more than a powerful, superbly reported work of journalism. It is contemporary history at its finest." (Maya Jasanoff)

"Keefe uses the old Irish phrase, 'Whatever you say, say nothing,' to suggest and to say just about everything. His great accomplishment is to capture the tragedy of the Troubles on a human scale. By tracing the intersecting lives of a handful of unforgettable characters, he has created a deeply honest and intimate portrait of a society still haunted by its own violent past. A bracing, empathetic, heartrending work of storytelling." (Colum McCann)

"A shattering, intimate study of how young men and women consumed by radical political violence are transformed by the history they make, and struggle to come to terms with the blood they have shed, Say Nothing is a powerful reckoning. Keefe has written an essential book." (Philip Gourevitch)

Phenomenal

For anyone with any interest in The Troubles, this book is brilliant. I am honestly so impressed!

An excellent book!

The book itself is everything you might want from a non-fiction text, a gripping story thoroughly researched and written by a master. On top of that the narrator does a magnificent job, the best I have heard so far - he couldn't have done it better if he was one of the people in the book telling you the story in a pub. His accent also helps make it real, I owe him a lot of what this book gave me.

A masterpiece!

I loved this book; it is so well written and researched and the narration is excellent. A difficult yet fascinating history is told in a very thoughtful and masterful manner, leaving the listener with so much to contemplate. I could not stop listening and now I cannot stop thinking about the causes, meaning and consequences the troubles had. I am from South Africa and I hope that Patrick Radden Keefe will one day write a book about the south african troubles.

Excellent account of the causes and impacts of the Troubles

This is a fascinating book that manages to retain a disinterested perspective yet coveys the true horrors of sectarian violence. I grew up in the Republic during the Troubles when the background noise of school mornings was RTE radio reports about so called punishment shootings, British Soldiers being shot, car bombs etc, but despite having a reasonable awareness of the activity and motivations of the IRA this book really clarified my understanding of the chronology of events and the breathtaking violence of NI terrorism.