Bear in Mind These Dead by Susan McKay Faber and Faber HK$142
Novelist Martin Amis once pointed out to former British prime minister Tony Blair that the entire death toll for the Northern Irish Troubles was 'the equivalent of one bad month in Iraq'. His comment didn't account for the fact that for a population of two million in Northern Ireland, 4,000 killed from 1966 to 2005 meant many thousands more injured or bereaved. Susan McKay, who covered the North as a reporter from the early 90s, remembers the stories of grief she would be told as part of her privileged and damaging work. One interview was with the husband of a pregnant woman shot dead in front of her five small children. Upon returning home and holding her own baby, McKay felt suffocated by guilt about her happiness. In Bear in Mind These Dead, she tries to relieve the pain of what Primo Levi described as that of the 'unlistened-to-story'. Her book contains account after horrific account of violence and remembers the dead in the words of those who loved them. Readers won't be able to read the book in one sitting. And some won't be able to finish the book, so harrowing are the tales. But that's not to deny its undeniable worth.