Started: 2/10/2020
Completed: 2/13/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Best books list
Review:
So, the Irish just seem to enjoy poetry in every day use. Keefe quotes a description of the use of tear gas from a local newspaper in West Belfast as "...a kind of binding agent, a substance that could weld the crowd together in common sympathy and common hatred for the men who gassed them..." Wow.
This book is sad. That is to be expected of any book that talks about "the troubles." I thought, at first, that it was very sympathetic to the IRA, but as the book progressed, I realized that the author had just given everyone an even hand. I'm so used to thinking of the IRA in negative terms (as terrorists) that when they were treated fairly it seemed like they were being treated kindly. That was a bit of a shock to my own biases.
I had no idea that the members of the IRA had given personal oral histories to Boston College. I don't know how I missed the headlines, but for whatever reason, I was unaware. It was odd to me how much detail the author had about the way that various people were thinking. I kept double checking to be sure it wasn't a novel. It isn't. What an amazing work.
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