The 40th anniversary of Chile's 11 September 1973 coup prompted a flood of studies, memoirs, commemorations and reflective essays on the significance of events in a country whose politics have had a greater impact on the comparative study of democracy than one would expect for a nation of its size. It is precisely the drama of the end of one of Latin America's most enduring democracies and its emblematic transition to democracy that has elicited such interest, not to mention how the country dealt with and processed the painful and violent legacy left by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. This is a contested history – while some suggest that Pinochet's crimes have been swept under the rug, others argue that human rights violations have been dealt with as well as can feasibly be considered possible, walking a pragmatic line between justice and the maintenance of what was a precarious democracy at the outset of the transition. Among this flood of reflections, this carefully constructed and skilfully executed volume, edited by Cath Collins, Katherine Hite and Alfredo Joignant, stands out for its insightful analysis and path-breaking contribution to understanding the politics of memory in Chile and beyond.

The aforementioned plethora of studies tends to fall into two camps, one more political and the other anthropological and sociological. Political scientists have tended to focus on juridical interpretations of rights abuses and have analysed the impact of dealing with the past on the politics of democratisation. On the other hand, anthropological and sociological approaches analyse the impact of human rights abuses on the fabric of society and in the public and private spheres of individuals and groups. No study before this one has woven these strands together for a comprehensive treatment of the politics of memory. The book gets to the hard-core politics of human rights abuses and their aftermath but at the same time takes account of the lived experiences of people in a way that no other volume does.

The editors begin by noting that most political scientists have tended to steer clear of the study of the politics of memory, either because it was seen as too subjective, because it was deemed more the purview of history or sociology, or because political scientists saw collective memory embedded in the very institutions that they deemed as more appropriate objects of study. The editors dismiss this notion, and a number of the political chapters follow their call to take a political scientist's toolbox to the politics of memory with fruitful results. Each of the chapters shows that memories are deployed by actors as powerful political tools. The works in the volume also share the idea that different generations interpret the same events differently, that political ideology continues to weigh on how current and past events are interpreted politically, and that despite the desire of most actors to reach some sort of shared sense of national consensus, memories of the past continue to have an impact on the conduct of democratic politics many years later.

The universally high-quality chapters present different takes on the relationships discussed here. After a tightly constructed introduction, accessible to new readers of Chilean politics and still instructive for experts, the volume's first chapter deals with more traditionally political issues. Alexander Wilde's chapter demonstrates how the courts, the media and events (which he terms ‘irruptions of memory’) interacted to provide two different ‘seasons’ of attitudes regarding human rights abuses and led to distinct policies wherein the state could act more aggressively to deal with the past. Similarly, Cath Collins’ meticulously researched chapter shows the sources behind the shift from relative impunity early in the democratic transition to a more aggressive stance by the courts, though she also underscores how the closed nature of these processes provided less than satisfactory outcomes for protagonists and the public. Elizabeth Lira and Brian Loveman's wide-ranging analysis of ‘torture as public policy’ steps out of the frame of reference of most of the chapters in the book to recognise that rather than torture being an isolated tool employed by the Pinochet government, it has a long trajectory in Chile from colonial times to the present and has been consistently condoned or ignored by government authorities.

The next two chapters shift the focus to symbolic representations of the politics of memory, departing from the more formalistic format of the previous chapters but maintaining their quality and sharpness. Cath Collins and Katherine Hite present a cogent and fascinating analysis of the memorialisation of sites and spaces associated with the dictatorship. They reconstruct not just the process of memorialisation, but also how these spaces have become key public arenas for activism and reflection on the past and future. In a similarly symbolic vein, Alfredo Joignant's insightful chapter on Pinochet's funeral details how a single event could again set off a painful and soul-searching debate on the significance of the regime for Chile's political and social fabric. The funeral prompted declarations of the definitive end of the transition, with some suggesting the fallacious notion that the ‘Pinochet effect’ would cease to be significant to Chilean politics.

The final substantive chapter, by Carlos Huneeus and Sebastián Ibarra, examines the notion of a ‘divided Chile’ along the cleavage line established by the dictatorship, as well as associated issues that divide or unite the Chilean public. Relying on extensive political opinion survey data, the authors not only examine contemporary attitudes regarding the past but also explore how political opinions in the country have been transformed since the turbulent 1970s.

Collins, Hite and Joignant have produced what amounts to the definitive collection on the politics of memory in Chile. The list of contributors alone makes it essential reading on the subject, but the quality and depth of reflections on the legacies of the Pinochet dictatorship for Chile's collective memory, combined with the sensitivity of the volume to the multi-dimensional elements of memory and politics, make it an enjoyable one as well, with potential contributions for understanding the complex relationship between politics and memory in cross-national perspective.