Author | Patrick Radden Keefe |
---|---|
Audio read by | Matthew Blaney [1] |
Cover artist | Stefano Archetti (photo) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Subject | The Troubles |
Publisher | William Collins |
Publication date | November 1, 2018 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 513 |
Awards | 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing |
ISBN | 9780008159252 |
OCLC | 1063745342 |
941.670824092 | |
LC Class | DA995.B5 K44 2018 |
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland is a 2018 book by writer and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. It focuses on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It spent six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and received widespread critical acclaim.
Say Nothing's subject is The Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville as a central focus. The book describes the lives of Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes, Gerry Adams, and Jean McConville's children. Through these figures, the book offers a history of the Troubles as a whole: the civil rights movement and the turn to violence at the end of the 1960s, the Provisional IRA's bombing campaign, the 1981 hunger strike, the peace process and the opposition it faced within the republican movement, and the post-conflict struggle to understand crimes like McConville's murder. Keefe began researching and writing the book after reading the obituary for Dolours Price in 2013. [2]
The book's title is taken from the poem "Whatever You Say, Say Nothing" by Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney from his collection North (1975). [2]
Say Nothing was first published by the William Collins imprint of HarperCollins on November 1, 2018. It was later published in the US by Doubleday on February 26, 2019. [3]
The book debuted at number five on The New York Times Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction best-sellers list on March 17, 2019. [4] It spent six weeks on the list. [5] Say Nothing also debuted at number seven on The New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction best-sellers list on March 17, 2019, [6] and spent six weeks on the list. [7]
On the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the book received a cumulative "rave" rating based on 22 reviews: 11 "rave" reviews and 11 "positive" reviews. [8] Jennifer Szalai of The New York Times wrote, "Keefe's narrative is an architectural feat, expertly constructed out of complex and contentious material, arranged and balanced just so." [9]
Maureen Corrigan of NPR enthusiastically wrote, "Keefe is a storyteller who captures the complexities of a historical moment by digging deep into the lives of people on all sides of the conflict." [10] Corrigan concludes, "At the end of his panoramic book, which gathers together history, politics and biography, Keefe tightens the focus back to the mystery of McConville's abduction and murder. And, 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." [10]
Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post described how Say Nothing is "a cautionary tale, [that] speaks volumes — about the zealotry of youth, the long-term consequences of violence and the politics of forgetting." [11]
The Economist noted, "The discerning skill with which Mr. Radden Keefe gets inside these characters' minds may unsettle some readers, but it is also his book's strength. He shows how people who in peacetime might just have been strong-willed or colourful types came to condone or perpetrate the unspeakable." [12]
Stephen Phillips of The Los Angeles Times praised the book saying, "'Say Nothing' powerfully documents a society benumbed by trauma attempting to reckon with the abyss that engulfed it." [13]
The book was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by both the New York Times Book Review [14] and the Washington Post . [15] It won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. [16]
Disney began filming a 10 part TV adaptation of the same name in 2023. [17] [18]
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. Since October 12, 1931, The New York Times Book Review has published the list weekly. In the 21st century, it has evolved into multiple lists, grouped by genre and format, including fiction and nonfiction, hardcover, paperback and electronic.
Stephen Rea is an Irish actor of stage and screen. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he began his career as a member of Dublin’s Focus Theatre, and came to the attention of film audiences as one of the close collaborators of director Neil Jordan. He is an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and Tony Award nominee, a two-time BAFTA Award winner, and a three-time Irish Film and Television (IFTA) Award winner.
Simon Winchester is a British-American author and journalist. In his career at The Guardian newspaper, Winchester covered numerous significant events, including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. Winchester has written or contributed to over 30 nonfiction books, has written one novel, and has contributed to several magazines, among them Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic.
Jean McConville was a woman from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who was kidnapped and murdered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and secretly buried in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland in 1972 after being accused by the IRA of passing information to British forces.
Eamonn McCann is an Irish political activist, former politician and journalist from Derry, Northern Ireland. McCann was a People Before Profit (PBP) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Foyle from 2016 to 2017. In 2019, he was elected to Derry City and Strabane District Council, remaining in the position until his resignation for health reasons in March 2021.
Dolours Price was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer.
Marian Price, also known by her married name as Marian McGlinchey, is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer.
Anthony McIntyre is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer, writer and historian. He was imprisoned for murder for 18 years in Long Kesh, spending four of those years on the no-wash protest. After his release from prison in 1992 he completed a PhD in political science at Queen's University Belfast and left the Republican Movement in 1998 to work as a journalist and researcher. A collection of his journalism was published as a book in 2008, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.
Against Medical Advice: A True Story is a New York Times Bestselling non-fiction book by James Patterson and Hal Friedman, detailing the illness and medical struggles of Cory Friedman and his family. The book was published on October 20, 2008, by Little, Brown and Company.
The Disappeared are people believed to have been abducted, murdered and secretly buried in Northern Ireland, the large majority of which occurred during the Troubles. The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR) is in charge of locating the remaining bodies, and was led by forensic archaeologist John McIlwaine.
Patrick Radden Keefe is an American writer and investigative journalist. He is the author of five books—Chatter,The Snakehead,Say Nothing,Empire of Pain, and Rogues—and has written extensively for many publications, including The New Yorker, Slate, and The New York Times Magazine. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Say Nothing may refer to:
Milkman is a historical psychological fiction novel written by the Northern Irish author Anna Burns. Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the story follows an 18-year-old girl, "middle sister," who is harassed by an older married man known as "the milkman" and then as "Milkman". It is Burns's first novel to be published after Little Constructions in 2007, and is her third overall.
The Anthropocene Reviewed is the shared name for a podcast and 2021 nonfiction book by John Green. The podcast started in January 2018, with each episode featuring Green reviewing "different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale". The name comes from the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch that includes significant human impact on the environment. Episodes typically contain Green reviewing two topics, accompanied by stories on how they have affected his life. These topics included intangible concepts like humanity's capacity for wonder, artificial products like Diet Dr. Pepper, natural species that have had their fates altered by human influence like the Canada goose, and phenomena that primarily influence humanity such as Halley's Comet.
Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth is a 2019 non-fiction book by Rachel Maddow. It is her second book and was published by Crown on October 1, 2019. It concerns corruption in the oil and gas industry and the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma is a 2014 book by Bessel van der Kolk about the effects of psychological trauma, also known as traumatic stress. The book describes van der Kolk's research and experiences on how individuals are affected by traumatic stress, and its effects on the mind and body. It is based on his 1994 Harvard Review of Psychiatry article "The body keeps the score: memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress".
The Belfast Project was an oral history project on the Troubles based at Boston College in Massachusetts, U.S. The project began in 2000 and the last interviews were concluded in 2006. The interviews were intended to be released after the participants' deaths and serve as a resource for future historians.
CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties is a 2019 nonfiction book written by Tom O'Neill with Dan Piepenbring. The book presents O'Neill's research into the background and motives for the Tate–LaBianca murders committed by the Manson Family in 1969. O'Neill questions the Helter Skelter scenario argued by lead prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the trials and in his book Helter Skelter (1974). The book's title is a reference to the covert CIA program Operation CHAOS.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty is a 2021 book by Patrick Radden Keefe. The book examines the history of the Sackler family, including the founding of Purdue Pharma, its role in the marketing of pharmaceuticals, and the family's central role in the opioid epidemic. The book followed Keefe's 2017 article on the Sackler family in The New Yorker, titled The Family That Built an Empire of Pain.
Say Nothing is an upcoming historical TV series on steaming service Disney+, produced by FX Productions. Detailing four generations of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, it is an adaptation of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.