Going Platinum, Volume One

Revisiting Our Most Successful Recommendations

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A few weeks ago, Dame Margaret had a great idea for an issue for paid subscribers: our recommendations that have gone platinum. What things – cultural, practical, both or neither – have we loved and recommended to others that have resonated so powerfully that people still tell us how much they’ve enjoyed and passed on the recommendations to others? It’s the most valuable and least prone-to-toxicity type of virality I can think of, and we’ve had a bunch over the last 10+ years of Two Bossy Dames’ existence. Off the top of my head, these include Fleabag, Feminine Rage, Hamilton (not that it needed help, but we were very early & steadfast adopters), One Direction & Harry Styles (again, they didn’t need a TBD boost, but boy, they got one), and the works of Laurie Colwin. Overall, though, the one that’s meant the most to me is Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2018 book Say Nothing. 

It’s an easy book to recommend to readers of widely varying tastes and interests because it synthesizes so many ways to appeal to a broad audience of readers looking for a variety of reading experiences. It’s bizarre to describe a book about human brutality as engrossing and transcendent, but Say Nothing is both of those things. 

It's a true crime mystery, but it’s never lurid, and Keefe’s sympathy and care for the victims is foregrounded consistently throughout. It’s an ambitious work of history, elegantly covering over 40 recent years of a conflict with its roots in the Middle Ages. It’s a story about what happens to revolutionary ideology when true believers in their teens and 20s unexpectedly survive into middle age and beyond. It’s a horror story about how hard, how psychologically and sociologically corrosive it is to keep terrible secrets. It’s about camaraderie and betrayal, murder and regret, and the hope that good things can eventually emerge from the wreckage of terrible actions.

And now it’s a raves-earning TV series; a great pick for intergenerational viewing over Thanksgiving Weekend, if you’re in the market for such a thing. You don’t need to have read Say Nothing to admire and enjoy the series (it’s 9 episodes, each clocking in at a respectful-of-the-viewer’s-time 45ish minutes), but I think it helps, not least because the trailers make it look like a series of daring, righteous heists, with a tiny bit of the consequences of such capers sprinkled on top. It’s gripping and has no shortage of funny moments, of course – like so many trauma survivors, the Irish are famously witty-to-hilarious – but I think there’s no way for it not to be crushingly sad for the most part (complimentary). My fellow critic Marni Cerise, who watched without any prior knowledge of the story, and I had a great conversation about it for Telly Visions, and her questions about historical context and character motivations are pretty illuminating. You could also prepare or follow up your viewing with my fact-or-fiction explainer for Vulture (a lifetime writing goal, met).

If you’re one of the folks who’s read and/or watched Say Nothing, I’d love to hear about it: what worked, what didn’t, what’s made it special to you, if you’ve recommended it to others, and what they thought of it. Thanks for reading all of the somethings I’ve felt compelled to say.