This Thing Called Courage

Set in the rough neighborhoods of South Boston, This Thing Called Courage is a collection of seven moving stories dealing with sexual desire among young, working-class Irish Catholic men. Author J.G. Hayes does an excellent job of capturing the conflicting emotions of his characters as they wrestle with ""some bastard child of... shame and desire."" In ""Jimmy Callahan, Married, Three Kids,"" a firefighter is drawn to a widowed co-worker; the narrator of ""The Rain"" suffers a breakdown after a beloved friend plummets to his death; and in the title story, a repairman recalls an ill-fated affair with his high school gym teacher. These stories, often bleak but always deeply moving, are a welcome addition to the Boston Irish subgenre of hard-knocks fiction.