karenrj 's review for:

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

5.0

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This is a compulsive read. Keefe tells intertwined stories about members of the IRA and their victims, and their victimhood. Much revolves around a collection of oral histories collected by Irish people and housed at Boston College. Interviewees were promised confidentiality, but Boston College ended up turning over the interviews, which were then used in various more and less successful ways to locate bodies of the disappeared and to prosecute (or try to) both IRA members and Northern Irish (and British) police and military personnel. It's amazing how Gerry Adams has managed to escape any consequences, while those whom he commanded were haunted by their pasts.