![]() ![]() His 15-year-old son, Ryan, the closest thing to a likable character, wears the bruises to prove it. Tony Cusack, who helps Jimmy with the cleanup, has no choice in the matter, burdened as he is with six children and a drinking problem that makes him mean as a skunk. Maureen Phelan’s rash act sets off a roundelay of events that sweeps through the neighborhood, eventually putting her son’s illegal business at risk. Ireland is gripped in a recession, and a lot of people have no jobs - but not down here, where everyone’s working in the shadow economy, selling drugs or sex or someone else’s stuff. ![]() To Jimmy Phelan, the most feared gangster in the city of Cork, that means cleaning up his mother’s kitchen after she bashes an intruder to a bloody pulp with a gaudy religious artifact she calls her “holy stone.” This tragicomic scene captures the wonderfully offbeat voice of Lisa McInerney, whose irreverent first novel, THE GLORIOUS HERESIES (Tim Duggan, $27), descends into the city’s seedy underworld and finds a community of alcoholics, prostitutes, drug dealers and their customers, who live like rats but speak like street poets. ![]() Irish sons are brought up to honor their mothers. ![]()
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