Say Nothing
Patrick Radden Keefe builds this work of narrative nonfiction around the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten taken from her Belfast home by the Irish Republican Army and not found for decades. From that case he traces the larger history of the Troubles, following figures like the IRA volunteers Dolours and Marian Price and the militant turned politician Gerry Adams. Drawing on an oral history project at Boston College whose recordings became evidence, Keefe examines who carried out the killing and how former combatants reckoned with what they had done. The book is both a murder mystery and a study of memory, loyalty, and the long aftermath of political violence. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award and inspired a television series.
What you might want to know about Say Nothing
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A nonfiction account of a 1972 murder that opens into the wider story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Yes. It is a work of narrative nonfiction about real events during the Troubles, centered on the murder of Jean McConville.
Yes. A television series based on the book was released, dramatizing the events Keefe reports.
Say Nothing was written by Patrick Radden Keefe, published in 2019 by Doubleday.
Say Nothing is 464 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Say Nothing takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
Say Nothing is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
