Early Contender for Book of the Year

Say Nothing is a book about many things - compromise, peace, murder, the past and how it affects the present - but is really about one thing, The Troubles. It is one of the greatest pieces of modern Irish history and non-fiction in general, like wide-angle version of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

The book opens with the kidnapping of Jean McConville, a recently widowed mother of 10, in 1972. The McConville’s are what keep this story grounded. The book also follows the Provisional IRA (Provos), the Irish Nationalists who use violence in order to get what they want. Specifically, the book follows Dolours Price, her sister, Marian, and the two ‘heads’ of the IRA: Brendan Hughes and Gerry Adams. Hughes was the man on the ground, going on missions, getting his hands dirty, while Adams usually didn’t get directly involved. It’s easy to get swept up in the action movie elements of what the IRA did (escaping from a prison using a hijacked helicopter, using triple (not double) agents, and jason bourne-ing through streets) but the McConville’s always bring the reader back to the toll that the conflict had, on both sides. Over 3,500 people died.

And while the first part of the book sets the scene, the second part of the book really drives home what makes this story so compelling. The Good Friday Agreement ended fighting between the Provos and unionists, but still allowed for a non-united Ireland. This left many of the members of the IRA to wonder if what they did was worth it. Throughout the book, these big IRA players did some nasty things: kill traitors who were informing on them to the other side (touts), set off car bombs in metropolitan areas, and arrange hits on certain targets thought to be British. And almost everyone told themselves that these were necessary evils in order to achieve a united Ireland. But then the Good Friday Agreement was signed, and the fighting stopped. Without a united Ireland. Which leads to one of the biggest themes of the book: compromise. The Good Friday Agreement is a compromise, in order to achieve peace. The Belfast Project, in which members of both sides give interviews as to what happened, only to be released on their deaths, was a compromise. The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains, which helped find many people who were ‘disappeared’, was a compromise. And while this led to peace as we know it today, it left many who fought at that time in the past.

The whole book is an achievement in, as Patrick Radden Keefe calls it, narrative nonfiction. I cannot recommend it enough. It asks important questions, and weaves together deeply personal stories with the defining conflict in modern day Irish history that needs to be read. I have nothing bad to say about it.

It’s an easy 5/5, like Larry Bird knowing he hit the last three to win the three-point contest before it goes in.