Before My Actual Heart Breaks: Tish Delaney

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Oh my goodness, such an apt title. I feel like my heart broke at least 5 times when reading this beautiful book. And I’d do it all over again! 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 On the outside it feels baffling that two people who marry and spend their lives together can be virtual strangers to each other, yet this is the reality of many arranged relationships. Tish Delaney movingly depicts the life of one such Northern Irish woman in her debut novel “Before My Actual Heart Breaks”. Mary Rattigan once dreamed of moving far away and being with her sweetheart, but those aspirations were dashed by the reality of her circumstances. When we meet her at the beginning of this novel it's 2007. She's estranged from her husband and her five children have gone away. Now there's nothing to bind her to the rural farm she's been confined to since she was sixteen but she finds herself questioning the heady plans she made in her youth and finds it difficult to articulate what she now desires. Over the course of the novel we discover the story of how she got to this point as well as a vivid depiction of The Troubles as experienced by a Catholic girl growing up in the 1970s who felt the alarming proximity of this long-term and bloody conflict. It's a story that powerfully represents the tension between the life you wanted and the life you've lived. 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. Her older sister leaves, and she reflects that will leave her all alone in the dark in the bedroom on The Hill. No electricity remains burning at night for silly children who should know there is only one thing to fear-losing Gods love and His Good Holy Mother. So Mary was raised with thoughts and her own emotional worries.

With beautifully written prose, this is a compelling read, particularly if you enjoy Irish literature and strong character driven novels. 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. 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. 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.Delaney's writing is a beautiful wave flowing lyrically . . . 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 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.... 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. 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. 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.

Reading this book kind of felt like breakthrough therapy for me. I genuinely laughed, I genuinely cried and I’ll be genuinely surprised if another book affects me so deeply this year.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 character Bridie I absolutely came to adore as I did John John but he exasperated me at times as so did Mary although I fully understood why they acted in such a way, and when we find out about john johns past that was so touching. 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. 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. I laughed, I cried, I felt every emotion under the sun. This book is a masterpiece and I’m so glad that we crossed paths. Definitely in my top reads of all time.

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.This book takes you by the chokehold. I felt paralysed by Mary’s sense of worthlessness and horrified by her acceptance of the hardships life had handed her; the love and protection she was so cruelly denied. I felt frustrated, too, as her relationship with John Johns stuttered along barely, hoping to shake some sense into them both to just communicate. This is Northern Ireland around 1970’s. When the bombing, the IRA, Protestants and Catholic’s were head on. How comes there’s something wrong with this book if you, you the nastiest stars giver, gave it 4 stars? That’s a miracle!”