Broken Irish

Delaney is certainly a talented writer. The jacket talks about his short story collections and a few prizes he has won, but I think this is his first novel. I would recommend this novel for someone who is looking for a compelling narrative, but is also unafraid of a book with literary trappings. The novel is set in South Boston, or Southie, as it is affectionately known. It involves a group of approximately a half dozen characters whose stories do occasionally intersect and with one or two of them actually connect with one another. 
Tommy is a drunk, one with a dying liver, who at the start of the novel experiences a conversion experience of sorts. He doesn't find God, but after witnessing a man fall from a moving car and break his neck, Tommy decides he needs to stop drinking. He doesn't go to AA meetings or a traditional type of detox, he stops cold turkey. Delaney describes this experience well. There is a logic to why Tommy has stopped drinking and one of the interesting elements of this experience is what Tommy's life is or becomes without the alcohol. Tommy who is likely in his 30s had been drinking non-stop from his teens until the moment of the accident, so there are large parts of his life he simply does not remember or remembers through a drunken haze. 
Colleen is a widow and mother of a son, Christopher, who has become increasingly sullen and detached from his mother and most of the rest of his life. Delaney provides the back story for both Colleen and Christopher. As the father of sons and as a former adolescent boy myself, I thought that Christopher's characterization rang true. In general, I do think that we males do, in adolescence, go through periods of anger, depression, withdrawal, and a host of other emotions as we deal with the raging testosterone in our bodies. However, Christopher's attitude and choices become clearer as we learn that he was abused by a local parish priest who it turns out had a long and documented history of this type of behavior. In a plot twist that is all too familiar these days, this priest, Father John, had been moved throughout his career and in his final posting returns to Southie and the neighborhood he grew up in. 
This development does not please his estranged brother Terrence Rafferty who has climbed out of this neighborhood to become one of the richest and most well-respected financiers in Boston. Rafferty decides he needs someone to put his autobiography into some sort of order and he hires Tommy. This is an interesting fictional device, not quite an epistolary device, like in Frankenstein, but it is still not the typical exposition. It does make you wonder if Rafferty is engaged in self-censoring or if he is truly just giving Tommy the raw details of his life that Tommy is then asked and paid to shape into a presentable form. 
In the course of Rafferty's narrative, we learn that he has an enemy from back in the neighborhood. This enemy is someone that Rafferty has been competing with for years and years in a variety of forums. This unnamed enemy (we eventually learn that his first and middle name is James Joyce!) still lives in Southie, but is essentially the mob boss of the community. It also turns out that Mr. McX (as Rafferty calls him), has a daughter.
The other main character is a young girl named Jeanmarie. She has decided to run away from home to move into an apartment with her older boyfriend,Bobby. As she is literally leaving the neighborhood, Jeanmarie runs into Christopher who recognizes her. They establish an odd Platonic friendship, though Christopher and Bobby too are weary of Jeanmarie. It turns out that Jeanmarie is the daughter of someone who is rather important and dangerous in Southie. Yes, Jeanamarie is James Joyce McX's daughter. To make money, Jeanmarie and Bobby agree to have sex while a photographer takes pictures of them. Since Jeanmarie is not 18, they cannot do pornographic films, but apparently pictures of explicit sex for the Internet is somehow acceptable. Or at least this is what Jeanmarie agrees to, since the photographer, Marty is able to provide Jeanmarie with cash, an apartment, and hopefully a car when she learns how to drive. 
With this cast of characters, Delaney crafts a narrative that explores their lives and their neighborhood while also depicting each of them in various states of "brokenness." I must confess that while Delaney never explicitly states that Father John molested Christopher and countless other boys, there is no doubt this is what happened. This is the first novel I have read that addresses this issue, especially in its contemporary incarnation that allows the reader to provide his/her own context. With all of the lawsuits and prosecutions, I think Delaney feels there is not need to spell things out for his readers. However, Delaney manages to stay away from judging the priest, though he does put the Roman Catholic Church and its hierarchy, especially Cardinal Law, in a bad light. What I do admire, and I must be careful here, is the manner in which Delaney tries to get inside the head and emotions of Father John. He is not a monster, though his actions would certainly be predatory. It is a balancing act to make this priest fully dimensional, but Delaney pulls it off. 
The stories continue until they are all essentially entangled by the end of the narrative. Without giving anything away, I do find the resolution of Jeanmarie's story to be unsatisfying. However, this is a story about broken people, so why should their lives and stories be any less fractured