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.
As much as it feels like the Irish immigration novel is its own category, there's also been a rise in novels about Northern Irish women who never leave the place of their birth. Books such as “Milkman” and “Big Girl, Small Town” explore the interior lives of young women whose voices are often ignored by the larger community. Though Delaney's novel fits neatly alongside these others it's also very much its own piece as it poignantly presents the perspective of a married woman who comes to learn the habits and nature of her husband over many years but tragically fails to understand his heart. It's also a captivating coming of age tale as we follow the painful abuse she suffers at her mother's hand and how her sexual awakening becomes a form of rebellion because the worst thing she could ever become is a T.R.A.M.P. Though she finds it liberating to transgress the moral expectations placed upon her she soon finds the enormous longterm consequences of this brief pleasure which is over in “less time than baking a sponge cake”. It's heart wrenching when she realises that her parents would honestly prefer her to be blown up by a bomb rather than be “in the family way” as an unwed teen.
While the novel meaningfully portrays the suffocating effects of the religious and familial strictures in her life, it also shows the intelligence and humour of her wry perspective. Mary makes deliciously cutting observations about the tragic waste of sectarian conflicts and the way emotions aren't discussed in family life. At one point she describes how the Irish substitute for love is tea. She also forms some tender connections with certain individuals who inspire her and provide a steady source of comfort. The spectre of her grandmother is at times glimpsed in the distance as well as a good-natured soul named Birdie who becomes a kind of substitute mother for her. However, most of her relationships often include gaps of understanding so she comes to understanding the painful irony in how “No one knew us better than each other and we didn't know each other at all.” I enjoyed the way the story creates a building sense of tension concerning what Mary will do now that she's on her own and truly knows what she wants. Delaney's powerful novel shows the precarious bonds that exist between people who've had to abandon their dreams and the unexpected love that can be found when honest connections are made.
