Print View - We Don’t Know How It Ends

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Fintan O'Toole's latest book, We Don't Know Ourselves, starts in 1958 when Ireland "was just about beginning to change," and moves, one year at a time, into the transformation of Ireland from a developing country to a Celtic Tiger that wowed the European Union with its dramatic growth in GDP.

The one-year-per-chapter pace thankfully breaks down. Chapter 7 covers 1962-1999. Then back to one-year-per-chapter until 1975-1983, then 1971-1983, then two-years-per-chapter. The trouble with this form of organisation is it doesn't hold up. The Troubles never end. The conflict between Protestant Northern Ireland and Catholic Ireland just keeps surfacing, a story that gets told over and over again, bodies of innocents blown to bits and men starving themselves to gain symbolic concessions.

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The post We Don’t Know How It Ends appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by STEVE O’KEEFE.

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