Say Nothing
by Patrick Radden Keefe, Ariel Font Prades
European World HistoryTroublestrue crimemurderhistory
4.6
Open LibraryFirst lines
The John J. Burns Library occupies a grand Neo-Gothic building on the leafy campus of Boston College.
About this book
“Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book — as finely paced as a novel — Keefe uses McConville’s murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga.” – New York Times Book Review, Ten Best Books of the Year 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 guerril…
Themes & subjects
European World HistoryTroublestrue crimemurderhistoryIrish republican army
Characters & people
Setting
Northern IrelandBelfastIrelandLondonJohn J. Burns LibraryBoston CollegeEuropeDecember 197220032013
About the author
Patrick Radden Keefe
1976
Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of the New York Times bestseller Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, as well as two other books: The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, and Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping. He started contributing to The New Yorker in 2006 and has written articles about the chef and TV host Anthony Bourdain, the hunt for the drug lord Chapo Guzman, the tragic personal history of the mass shooter Amy Bishop, and the role that the Sackler family and their company Purdue Pharma played in sparking the opioid cris…
Reviews
No reviews yet — be the first to write one from the Log screen.
Quotes
No quotes yet.
