Publishers Weekly
01/28/2019
O’Callaghan’s stiff second novel (after The Dead House) maneuvers through the emotional and physical landscape of an afternoon tryst in a seedy Coney Island hotel room. Unlike within their confined, unfulfilling marriages, middle-aged lovers Michael and Caitlin are able to shed their inhibitions during monthly rendezvous in Coney Island. During one of these outings, they muse on their pasts, regrets, and fond memories. But as the day passes, both begin to wonder whether they will ever be fully together, as they’ve long planned; Michael’s wife is fighting kidney cancer and Caitlin’s husband’s career may require them to move away from New York. While the boardwalk setting “at the end of the world” before a large storm hits New York is vividly rendered, heightening the tension of what may be a final meeting, the thinness of the plot is frustrating, with Michael and Caitlin’s conversations coming across as rather maudlin. And while the story hinges on the assumed passion of their relationship, the two lovers are awkward and taciturn, and much of the dialogue is delivered in one-sided, long-winded monologues. O’Callaghan excels at painting a bleak portrait of physical and emotional isolation; unfortunately, the unsatisfying character development and weak plot fail to live up to the intriguing setup. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
An illicit meeting between long-term lovers makes for a poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time…In the closing pages, O’Callaghan’s prose reaches a pitch of emotional intensity that ensures these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed.” — The Guardian
“This is not an epic novel. There are no heroes. It is the story of two ordinary people trapped in their ordinary lives. But in the hands of O’Callaghan it is magnified to the truly extraordinary. A great tragedy. I long thought Anita Brookner the high priestess when it comes to telling the tales of loneliness and defeat. But she’s now got company.”
— Sunday Independent
“Evoking William Trevor and Colm Toibin…This book is a quiet a taboo-breaker…In simple but elegant language, O’Callaghan presents an intricate look inside a relationship — and the moment when it all is about to change… Yes, they’re adulterers and betrayers of those they’ve sworn to love, but from a novelistic point of view that only adds to the drama and tragedy of their lives — beautifully expressed by this fine chronicler of inner worlds.”
— Irish Examiner USA
“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 Reviews (starred review)
“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.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“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
“…a welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing“ — Edna O’Brien
“An illicit meeting between long-term lovers makes for a poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time…In the closing pages, O’Callaghan’s prose reaches a pitch of emotional intensity that ensures these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed.” — Happy Ever After blog, USA Today
“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
“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
“My Coney Island Baby, a second novel by the accomplished short-story writer Billy O'Callaghan, offers an amicable and committed picture of heartbreak.” — Telegraph
“In some ways [the] book reads a little bit like a modern-day Lady Chatterley’s Lover, with the lovers making their way to rendezvous at Coney Island rather than in a gamekeeper’s hut...Overall, there is much to savor in the book.” — Tablet
The Guardian
An illicit meeting between long-term lovers makes for a poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time…In the closing pages, O’Callaghan’s prose reaches a pitch of emotional intensity that ensures these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed.
Robert Olen Butler
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.
Happy Ever After blog
An illicit meeting between long-term lovers makes for a poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time…In the closing pages, O’Callaghan’s prose reaches a pitch of emotional intensity that ensures these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed.
Irish Examiner USA
Evoking William Trevor and Colm Toibin…This book is a quiet a taboo-breaker…In simple but elegant language, O’Callaghan presents an intricate look inside a relationship — and the moment when it all is about to change… Yes, they’re adulterers and betrayers of those they’ve sworn to love, but from a novelistic point of view that only adds to the drama and tragedy of their lives — beautifully expressed by this fine chronicler of inner worlds.
Sunday Independent
This is not an epic novel. There are no heroes. It is the story of two ordinary people trapped in their ordinary lives. But in the hands of O’Callaghan it is magnified to the truly extraordinary. A great tragedy. I long thought Anita Brookner the high priestess when it comes to telling the tales of loneliness and defeat. But she’s now got company.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
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.
Edna O’Brien
…a welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing“
Sunday Times
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.
Irish Independent
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.
Telegraph
“My Coney Island Baby, a second novel by the accomplished short-story writer Billy O'Callaghan, offers an amicable and committed picture of heartbreak.”
Tablet
“In some ways [the] book reads a little bit like a modern-day Lady Chatterley’s Lover, with the lovers making their way to rendezvous at Coney Island rather than in a gamekeeper’s hut...Overall, there is much to savor in the book.”
John Boyne
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.
Simon Van Booy
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.
Charles Kilroy
A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time… these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed.
Star-Tribune
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.
Guardian
An illicit meeting between long-term lovers makes for a poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time…In the closing pages, O’Callaghan’s prose reaches a pitch of emotional intensity that ensures these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed.
Edna O'Brien
…a welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing“
Scotland Herald
Intensely romantic… Billy O’Callaghan is a writer who has an unyielding faith in the strength and vitality of language to convey the emotions and the physical world. In this sense, he is old-fashioned, straight out of the much-neglected D.H. Lawrence school of writing… he is also a writer who knows how to control his characters, his narrative, and… his voice. That’s what counts, and it’s what makes My Coney Island Baby such a good novel.”
John Banville
Billy O’Callaghan’s work is at once subtle and direct, warm and clear-eyed, and never less than beautifully written. He has a moving ability to express the hopes and fears of ‘ordinary’ people, and he knows intimately the ways of the world. He richly deserves a world-wide reputation. This writer is the real thing.
The Times (London)
My Coney Island Baby is that rare thing, a tender straight-ahead love story which convinces thoroughly while steering clear of the fashionably dysfunctional and transgressive relationships that dominate so much contemporary fiction. . .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 Scarlett Letter.
The Times
It’s that rare thing, a tender straight-ahead love story which convinces thoroughly while steering clear of the fashionably dysfunctional and transgressive relationships that dominate so much contemporary fiction. . .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 Scarlett Letter.
The Times of London
It’s that rare thing, a tender straight-ahead love story which convinces thoroughly while steering clear of the fashionably dysfunctional and transgressive relationships that dominate so much contemporary fiction. . .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 Scarlett Letter.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-01-21
Through one day in a yearslong extramarital affair, an Irish writer looks at intimacy and estrangement in an impressive work.
For more than 20 years, Michael and Caitlin have been meeting on the first Tuesday of every month and sharing a few hours in a cheap hotel in the run-down New York City beach community of Coney Island. On the winter day that dominates the story, he is 48 and she's about 44. They first appear walking through bitter cold and wind. The book's third sentence reads: "This is bleakness without respite." O'Callaghan (The Dead House, 2018, etc.) also opens with some of the book's most impressive writing, fistfuls of muscular prose that channels Seamus Heaney: "the enormous sprawl of ocean that, in close, bucks and moils. Frothing needlepoint flecks mottle a surface dull as lead, great furred bilges of surf break hard against the shoreline." It's almost showy, maybe forced—"needlepoint"? The prose settles down while remaining exceptional, elegiac and eloquent, in conveying insight and sympathy for the small cast's two main players as they face an uncertain future. Michael and his wife, Barbara, grew apart when their firstborn died after 14 weeks in ICU, and Barbara has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Caitlin and her husband have come to accept the distance between them, and she knows he has had affairs. Recently he's been offered a promotion and transfer to Peoria, Illinois. It's clear that "bleakness without respite" doesn't apply just to Coney Island in winter. Hard choices loom. Though age and guilt have colored their precious Tuesdays, the lovers still treasure them, but as the hours pass, they wonder if the moment has come for a long-avoided decision.
O'Callaghan anatomizes these emotional and psychological odysseys, making a narrative light on incident compellingly readable.
