Peggy Recommends: Boston Irish by Edward Delaney

A cursory browse of the Boston Globe review Boston Irish by Edward Delaney intrigued me enough to put it on my “remember-to-read” list. Southie, tough Irish characters, corruption, feuds, the Catholic Church, all sounded to me like an interesting, but perhaps predictable mix. I was more than surprised to be deeply drawn into this complex novel and its characters that inhabit the late 1990s world of South Boston and the widening scandal of sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese. The towns of Wellesley, Needham, Newton, Brookline and Milton get nods as do Boston College, Cardinal Law, and the Chancery. I felt I entered into the lives, and more importantly into the minds, of this interlocking set of characters, and particularly into the minds of the most unappealing ones. There are few books that have done that for me. Don’t miss this dark but stunning novel. PM