Before My Actual Heart Breaks

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''Gorgeous prose . . . my heart broke several times . . . Mary''s voice is so raw.'' Good Housekeeping

''This is in many ways a familiar story but it is told in such a fresh, entertaining, funny and moving way, it felt like I was reading something brand new.'' RODDY DOYLE

''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
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''If I could go back to being sixteen again, I''d do things differently.''
''Everyone over the age of forty feels like that, you total gom,'' says my best friend Lizzie Magee.

When she was young Mary Rattigan wanted to fly. She was going to take off like an angel from heaven and leave the muck and madness of troubled Northern Ireland behind. Nothing but the Land of Happy Ever After would do for her.

But as a Catholic girl with a B.I.T.C.H. for a Mammy and a silent Daddy, things did not go as she and Lizzie Magee had planned.

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.

Will she finally find the courage to ask for the love she deserves? Or is it too late?