My Coney Island Baby - Hardcover

O'Callaghan, Billy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062856561 ISBN 13: 9780062856562

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2019

Synopsis

An exquisite, heart-breaking novel by an Irish discovery.

Radiant with beauty, longing, and desire, and deeply touching, this literary novel, reminiscent of the works of William Trevor and Colm Tóibín, evokes the long love affair between a man and a woman, each married to another, who meet every month in a decaying hotel in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

On a bitterly cold winter's afternoon, Michael and Caitlin, two middle-aged lovers, escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit date. Once a month for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven, the place in which they have abandoned themselves to their love.

These beautiful, carefully-rationed days have long sustained Michael and Caitlin's love, and have helped help them survive the tedium of their lives separate from each other. But now, amid the howling winds whipping off the Atlantic, and a snow storm blackening the horizon, this nearly abandoned resort feels like the edge of the world. On this winter day, burrowed in their private cocoon, they will discover that their lives are on the brink of change.

Michael's wife is battling cancer, and Caitlin's husband is about to receive a major promotion, which will involve relocating to the Midwest. After half a lifetime together in their most intimate moments, certain long-denied facts must be faced, decisions made, consequences weighed and, maybe, just maybe, chances finally taken.

A quiet, intense depiction of love and intimacy, My Coney Island Baby reveals, within the course of a single day's passing, the histories, landscapes, tragedies and occasional moments of wonder that constitute the lives of two people who, although living worlds apart, have been inexorably drawn together. But even in this most private of retreats, a place seemingly built for romance, the most heartbreaking of realities loom.

About this title

Review

"Billy O'Callaghan's writing is a profound, uncommon blend of grit and beauty, with sentences that, like his characters, are simultaneously sparse and infinitely rich."--Simon Van Booy

"I know of no writer on either side of the Atlantic who is better at exploring the human spirit under assault than Billy O'Callaghan."--Robert Olen Butler

"Vividly rendered... O'Callaghan excels at painting a portrait of physical and emotional isolation."--Publishers Weekly

"O'Callaghan [has made a] significant achievement in this fine novel... Good books remind us of other good books and in its treatment of adultery this one calls to mind thematic ancestors such as Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina and The Scarlet Letter." --Sunday Times

"Quiet, subtle and deeply moving ... This is a fine novel, with elegance and wisdom lying beneath an unpretensious surface and O'Callaghan, a gifted writer, has managed to do that most difficult of things: take a quiet, almost everyday story and transform it into a thing of beauty."--John Boyne, Irish Times

"A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time... these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed."--Charles Kilroy, The Guardian

"With poeticism and aching sensitivity, O'Callaghan unknots the minute workings of these starved adulterous souls ... images rendered here stick with you, such is the intensity that they shimmer with."--Irish Independent

"An attentive portraitist, [O'Callaghan] writes beautifully, and at length, about gestures, glances and other fleeting moments... A small story told at close range, My Coney Island Baby is suffused with great, painful beauty."--Star-Tribune

"...a welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing"--Edna O'Brien

"Compellingly readable...An impressive work...Through one day in a years long extramarital affair, an Irish writer looks at intimacy and estrangement... The prose [is] exceptional, elegiac and eloquent, in conveying insight and sympathy for the small cast's two main players as they face an uncertain future... "--Kirkus (starred review)

From the Back Cover

On a bitterly cold winter afternoon, Michael and Caitlin, two middle-aged lovers, escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit date. Once a month for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven: the place in which they have abandoned themselves to their love.

These beautiful, carefully rationed days have long sustained Michael and Caitlin's love, and have helped them survive the tedium of their lives when separate from each other. But now, amid the howling winds whipping off the Atlantic and a snowstorm blackening the horizon, this nearly abandoned resort feels like the edge of the world. On this winter day, burrowed in their private cocoon, they will discover that their lives are on the brink of change.

Michael's wife is battling cancer, and Caitlin's husband is about to receive a major promotion that will involve relocating to the Midwest. After half a lifetime together in their most intimate moments, certain long-denied facts must now be faced, decisions made, consequences weighed, and maybe, just maybe, chances finally taken.

A quiet, intense depiction of love and intimacy, My Coney Island Baby reveals, within the course of a single day's passing, the histories, landscapes, tragedies, and occasional moments of wonder that constitute the lives of two people who, although living worlds apart, have been inexorably drawn together. But even in this most private of retreats, a place seemingly built for romance, the most heartbreaking of realities looms.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0062856561
• ISBN 13: 9780062856562
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 244