5 billion/5 stars. Easily one of my favorite books of the year.
This was easily one of my favorite books of the year. This story is incredible: the body of a missing widowed mother of ten is found 40 years after the fact, and Patrick Radden Keefe impeccably uses this event to unpack the charged history (and present) of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
He somehow manages to keep it literary while also pulling from a blend of factual records and, most compellingly, firsthand “oral histories” that may or may not be flawed, fraught, and misleading.
Vibes
- the Troubles in Northern Ireland
- literary nonfiction
- firsthand oral histories
- flawed and fraught
A quote
Bill Clinton used this quote, from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, in his speech during the events of the book:
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.