Before My Actual Heart Breaks: Tish Delaney

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With beautifully written prose, this is a compelling read, particularly if you enjoy Irish literature and strong character driven novels.

For this reason, I don’t think the reader can trust any of the epiphanies our protagonist has. The sex she has aged 16, after which she becomes pregnant, is, to her “the first chance I’ve had in sixteen years to do what I want”. It should feel transgressive and feminist, but it doesn’t quite come off. The man who takes her virginity is older and in a position of relative power. In the Republic, it would be classed as statutory rape. Now, five children, twenty-five years, an end to the bombs and bullets, enough whiskey to sink a ship and endless wakes and sandwich teas later, Mary's alone. She's learned plenty of hard lessons and missed a hundred steps towards the life she'd always hoped for. This book was a bit of a curate's egg for me. The first part dealing with Mary's childhood before her forced marriage at sixteen was superb. It really captured growing up with a toxic, narcissistic mother in Northern Ireland and resonated so much with my own life down to her mother spelling out regpungant words (to her) such as T.R.A.M.P and the superior holier than thou attitude, belittling and sense of never being good enough or of getting things right. It started to fall apart for me when Mary gets pregnant after her first sexual encounter (how predictable) and is hastly married off to the farmer down the road who is the rumoured who has recently returned heartbroken from that there London (and is himself the rumoured illigetimate offspring of a priest).

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I generally don’t like to make comparisons between books, but this felt like a gorgeously Irish version of Betty by Tiffany McDaniels with its vivid ensemble of family and its intricate, sometimes ugly dynamics, and in the way that subjects so painful can still survive and go onto bloom into something pretty great. Mary falls pregnant at the tender age of sixteen during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Having been brought up harshly and devoutly, an unmarried mother was something to be talked about within the chapel and the community alike. Mary’s mother, someone you’d be stupid be caught talking about in church or community, takes her own action to protect the reputation of the family, and to save her own face.

Mary is bright, she has the drive and ability to fly away from her home; her abusive mammy and passive dada, the church and the petrifying violence of that time - but one mistake renders her powerless and her life is changed forever - she doesn't get that escape and is left to face her darkest fears To an extent, this book is a love story but by no means is it your typical run of the mill romance. It’s a love story about dreams, hopes, ambitions, family that aren’t blood and so much more. I just can’t actually comprehend how utterly beautiful this book is?? Tish Delaney is an incredibly talented author indeed. A touching tale of how one woman survives a tough beginning to eventually end up exactly where her heart belongs' ANNE GRIFFIN, author of When All is Said The story is firmly set in its historical context in terms of the attitudes within the community and issues within Catholic church which has been well documented. Northern Ireland’s political implosion and subsequent explosion is also portrayed heartbreakingly well for the sectarian divide, violence, atrocities and lost lives of which there are many reminders throughout the period of time covered. The Omagh bombing of 1998 especially resonates as it’s close to where Mary and family live and it’s horror contrasts really well with the lovely day the family have hay making. This is author Tish Delaneys debut novel, and it is wonderful! Written with beautiful, lyrical prose, I was captivated throughout the whole journey. My actual heart did break, many times.So, I’m giving this book 4 stars now that I finished it even though, it doesn’t feel like a 4 stars. But it my heart, it feels like it. So now Mary is in her adult life, and the lessons, hardship and things she’s been through has made her into the woman she is now. This book hooked me from the start… the story of Mary Rattigans abuse at the hands of her mother is raw and painful but at the early stage of the book she still clings to hope that she will leave Tyrone and her mother like her siblings have done. A teenage pregnancy and an inexplicable shotgun wedding changed all her plans. If you enjoy a meaty solid story full of intense raw emotions, hardship faced, and 25 years of being together with someone but.......as I started with the quote from this book, I’m going to end with the quote from it too.... Her wanting a better relationship with her Father, I felt the urge there. Her mother and her relationship was not ideal, far from it. All this is in the book.

The couple never speak to each other and it is not explained until near the end of the book why he agreed to marry Mary (although it is easy to guess, if not the most logical or realistic thing to do). They go onto to have five children, have a torrid but closeted in the bedroom sex life and despite working together on the farm never speak to one another and seem to show no kindness to each other either, which I just couldn't quite believe. They get married in 1982,I do know that many young people still had "shotgun" marriages at that point in time in Northern Ireland but don't know of anyone who married someone not the father of the child. At that point I was openly living with my boyfriend, all be it in the city as were many friends. Things weren't quite as oppressive sexually as made out, the book should have been set in the 60's or 70's if it wanted to have the sexual mores it recounts. Many girls crossed the water for an abortion in Scotland or England (as they still have to), often their parents were the most religious and most vocally against abortion in public, but this is never considered as an option for Mary.

I wanted to be the one he was paying attention to, just once. Sometimes it felt as if the fabric of the sofa had grown over me and no one had noticed.

The politics, personal, family, and cultural, of Ireland during The Troubles and it's fallout was at the forefront of the majority of the story. It impacted the relationships within the story and displayed the tensions in Northern Ireland as a whole and within nuclear families. It provided a band of elastic which Delaney stretched to breaking point before releasing only to stretch again. Once the band broke so did much of the tension Delaney had managed to toy with, and so the final half of the book felt a little lost. Later in the book there is an unambiguous rape scene, but it comes as a surprise to the reader and appears to exist for narrative closure more than anything. It feels gratuitous and implausible. Once I got to the halfway mark the book seemed to split in two. The first half a promise that the second didn't seem to keep. My heart broke for the families of Northern Ireland in the 80s, for the innocent child with an evil mother and pushover father, for the irreplaceable loss of loved ones, for the dreams that suddenly get flushed down the drain and for the longing of a love you so desperately need but never quite feel deserving of.As we follow Mary on her life’s journey and the era of time in 1970’s we see how things were so different then. The only thing worse than being 16 with dreams of escaping a violent and abusive mother and heading for England is being 16 and pregnant with all your dreams shattered. Mary's parents broker a marriage with a local man, John Johns, a handsome farmer but one touched with scandal due to his parentage. Never marry a 16-year-old with dreams, a baby in her womb and a massive chip on her shoulder! Overall, this is a very impressive and emotionally raw debut from Tish Delaney and I greatly look forward to reading more of her work in future. This book is about Mary Rattigan, a young Catholic girl trying to navigate growing up in 1970s Northern Ireland, where the “Troubles [rumble] constantly overhead like a thunderstorm”. She has a bully for a mother, a gormless father and six siblings. At school she shows potential, and dreams she will one day “grow wings and fly” – find a way to emigrate to England or the US and build a better life for herself.