Structure

Patrick Radden Keefe divides Say Nothing up into three books, each of which contains ten chapters. They deal respectively with the start of the time period known as the Troubles, the development of the Troubles and their climactic violence, and then with the aftermath of the Troubles as various parties attempted to enact cease-fires and conduct reconciliation projects. The division of this book into three discrete, smaller books allows the reader to trace a very clear chronology through history in a way in which the individual chapters, ten per book, do not. The individual chapters, though situated within the time frame of each book, follow the stories of one or another of Keefe’s main ‘cast’ of figures. Thus, the chapters allow the author to move back and forth in time within a given time period.

The chief benefit of this chronological flexibility within individual chapters is...