Charming Billy, Alice McDermott

Charming Billy is the story of a man who touches the lives of everyone he meets, especially his large Irish Catholic family. He has the gift of gab, is an honest man who goes out of his way for others, and, perhaps above all, hurts himself and the ones he loves with his alcoholism. While renovating a house on Long Island with his cousin and best friend, Dennis, Billy meets Eva, an Irish girl who is in the States to nanny for a wealthy family, and he falls completely in love with her. Sadly, things don't work out, and Billy uses this as his lifelong excuse to drink himself to death. The author is clear, however, that the end of the relationship isn't the cause of the alcoholism. That disease, of course, was raging even before that happened.