"The most natural thing in the world is giving birth. You built your whole religion around it. And yet you poured pitch on girls like me and sold us into slavery and took our humanity from us twice, a third time, as often as you could."

At the intersection where Irish Catholicism meets the ghetto street life, this utterly hilarious and intensely probing examination of human existence explores action, consequence, and the interconnectedness of interpersonal relationships.

A mob boss, prostitute, street thug, disgraced teen mum, and 15-year-old drug dealer walk into a bar... What ensues is a surprisingly tender look at life and love and redemption and morality all wrapped up in a cocoon of terrible behavior and side-splitting antics that somehow manages to capture the mundane and the absurd and the extreme all at once. Phew that was a mouthful.

I'm going to take a moment to gush over McInerney's writing. Intensely dialogue heavy, I was flabbergasted by her ability to strip each character to the essence of their interior using very little other than their own words.

This is the type of book I love best. Full of messy, raw, real, flawed, and complex people trudging through ridiculous, yet painfully relatable, experiences while trying to reconcile the burden of the heart and soul. Perfection!