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    My Coney Island Baby: A Novel
    My Coney Island Baby: A Novel
    My Coney Island Baby: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    My Coney Island Baby: A Novel

    Written by Billy O'Callaghan

    Narrated by Courtney Patterson

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    “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

    Radiant with beauty, longing, and desire, and deeply touching, this riveting 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 9, 2019
    ISBN9780062898395
    Author

    Billy O'Callaghan

    Billy O'Callaghan was born in Cork in 1974, and is the author of three short story collections: In Exile and In Too Deep(2008 and 2009 respectively, both published by Mercier Press), and The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind'(2013, published by New Island Books), which was honoured with a Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award and which has been selected as Cork's "One City, One Book" for 2017. His first novel, really a ghost story entitled The Dead House, was published by a small Irish press (Brandon Books/O'Brien Press) in May 2017, and will be published in the U.S. by Arcade in May 2018. A recipient of the 2013 Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award for Short Story of the Year, and a 2010 Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award for Literature, his story, "The Boatman" was recently shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Short Story Award. He has won and been shortlisted for numerous other honours, including the George A. Birmingham Award, the Lunch Hour Stories Prize, the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award, the Sean O'Faolain Award, the RTE Radio 1 Francis MacManus Award, the Faulkner/Wisdom Award, the Glimmer Train Prize and the Writing Spirit Award. He was also short-listed four times for the RTE Radio 1 P.J. O'Connor Award for Drama. He also served as the 2016 Writer-in-Residence for the Cork County Libraries. http://billyocallaghan.ie/en/

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    Reviews for My Coney Island Baby

    3.5/5

    18 ratings3 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Despite the hype, very disappointed. Over heated prose and pretentious. The author doesn't seem to really have anything to say nor do his characters. He seemed to have spent his energy creating literary sentences but a novel largely devoid of content or appeal. A stylized romance.
    • 4/5
      They met once a month on Coney Island. Have done so for many years now. They love each other, but both are married to other people. As we walk with them on a windy, cold day on a Coney Island that is a shadow of what it once was, as we enter the hotel room that is far from new, rather seedy, we learn their story.O'Callaghan may be my new, favorite wordsmith. His writing is descriptive, sometimes one may think it overdone, but it is beautiful, emotive. These two people are committing adultery, but the tenderness between them, the tender way they are written by the author, made me want to hear their story. His chapter on grief is the most expressive, touching that I have ever read. I read this so slowly, often out loud, many times rereading lines, paragraphs, in wonder at his talent. In many ways it reminded me of a movie I loved ages ago, called The same time next year. Loved the movie, loved the idea of the plot.These two meet and the changes in their lives, their bodies as they age from young to the middle of their years. Their familiarity with each other, yet still the wonder. These few hours together is their time, but life so often intrudes. Very melancholy, but thoughtful, how long can they go on, together, apart?ARC from Edelweiss.
    • 5/5
      My Coney Island Baby by Billy O'Callaghan begins with Michael and Caitlin on their way to an off-season hotel on Coney Island for their monthly rendez-vous, something they have been committed to for the past twenty-five years. Michael and Caitlin are married but not to each other. As a winter storm approaches, the couple must decide whether to continue their affair or leave each other forever. Michael's wife is seriously ill with cancer and Caitlin's husband may be transferred to the Midwest. As each chapter unfolds, we get to know each lover, from their youth through to their married years. These are interspersed with chapters about Michael and Caitlin in their present-day hotel room. I have read several reviews that objected to the adultery but it is not for me to judge. This is a heart-breaking story told with achingly beautiful and sensitive prose. Reading was pure pleasure. This is the second Billy O'Callaghan novel that I have read and I am a fan for life. Thank you to Harper Collins Publishers and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.