Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

by Patrick Radden Keefe

The notion that two young Irishwomen might die on hunger strike in the very prison where MacSwiney met his fate had the ingredients of priceless propaganda. The sisters, who had already been the subject of widespread press coverage during the trial, now became the stars of a different sort of serialised tabloid drama, with breathless daily updates in newspapers and on the radio about their steadily deteriorating condition. They were the ‘bomb girls’, and the coverage tended to play not on the fortitude with which they continued to swear off nourishment, but on their youth and gender, their frail femininity. (Hugh Feeney and Gerry Kelly, who also continued their strike, received much less attention and were never referred to as ‘boys’.)