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My Coney Island Baby
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD 2020*
On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendez-vous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven.
These precious, hidden hours are their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other. And so, after half a lifetime spent in secret, certain long-avoided facts need to be faced, consequences examined, decisions made, and – perhaps – chances finally taken.
A quiet, intense drama of late-flowering intimacy, My Coney Island Baby condenses, within the course of a single day, the histories, landscapes, tragedies and moments of wonder that constitute the lives of two people who, although born worlds apart, have been drawn together.
O’Callaghan, a masterful prose stylist, has created a devastatingly powerful novel about two unforgettable characters and the choices they have made. This is a book full of sorrow, but also radiant with beauty, longing and breathless desire.
On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendez-vous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven.
These precious, hidden hours are their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other. And so, after half a lifetime spent in secret, certain long-avoided facts need to be faced, consequences examined, decisions made, and – perhaps – chances finally taken.
A quiet, intense drama of late-flowering intimacy, My Coney Island Baby condenses, within the course of a single day, the histories, landscapes, tragedies and moments of wonder that constitute the lives of two people who, although born worlds apart, have been drawn together.
O’Callaghan, a masterful prose stylist, has created a devastatingly powerful novel about two unforgettable characters and the choices they have made. This is a book full of sorrow, but also radiant with beauty, longing and breathless desire.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 17, 2019
235 people are currently reading
2924 people want to read
About the author
Billy O'Callaghan
17 books311 followersBilly O'Callaghan was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1974. His books include the short story collections: In Exile (2008, Mercier Press), In Too Deep (2008, Mercier Press), and The Things We Lose, the Things We Leave Behind (2013, New Island Books/2017, CITIC Press, China); and a novel: The Dead House (2017, O'Brien Press/Arcade, USA).
His breakthrough novel, My Coney Island Baby, was published in 2019 by Jonathan Cape (UK, Ireland & the Commonwealth) and Harper (USA), as well as in translation by Grasset (France), Ambo Anthos (the Netherlands), btb Verlag (Germany), Paseka (Czech Republic), Ediciones Salamandra (Spain), L’Altra Editorial (Catalonia), Jelenkor (Hungary), Guanda (Italy) and Othello (Turkey). The novel was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award.
A new short story collection, The Boatman, and Other Stories was published in 2020 by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Harper Perennial (USA), and is forthcoming from btb Verlag (Germany) and Sefsafa (Egypt - Arabic).
His novel, Life Sentences, published to critical acclaim by Jonathan Cape in 2021, and reached #3 Irish fiction bestsellers list. 'Life Sentences' was published in the US by David R. Godine as well as on audiobook by Blackstone, as well as in Czech translation by Paseka, in Croatian by Petrine Knjige, in Farsi by Rahetalaei, and in French by Christian Bourgois. The French edition was shortlisted for the Prix Littéraire UIAD and the Littératures Européennes Cognac Prix du Lecteurs. An edition of the book is also forthcoming from btb Verlag (Germany) in April 2025).
His work has been recognised with numerous honours, including Bursary Awards for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Cork County Council, a Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award, as well as being shortlisted for Encore Award and Costa Short Story Award shortlistings, and his short stories have appeared in more than 100 magazines and literary journals around the world, including: Agni, the Bellevue Literary Review, the Chattahoochee Review, Fiction Magazine, the Kenyon Review, the London Magazine, the Massachusetts Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, Salamander, the Saturday Evening Post, the Stinging Fly and Winter Papers.
His latest novel, The Paper Man, was published in May 2023 by Jonathan Cape (UK) & Godine (USA), and as an audiobook by Blackstone. It has also been translated into Czech, published by Paseka.
His breakthrough novel, My Coney Island Baby, was published in 2019 by Jonathan Cape (UK, Ireland & the Commonwealth) and Harper (USA), as well as in translation by Grasset (France), Ambo Anthos (the Netherlands), btb Verlag (Germany), Paseka (Czech Republic), Ediciones Salamandra (Spain), L’Altra Editorial (Catalonia), Jelenkor (Hungary), Guanda (Italy) and Othello (Turkey). The novel was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award.
A new short story collection, The Boatman, and Other Stories was published in 2020 by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Harper Perennial (USA), and is forthcoming from btb Verlag (Germany) and Sefsafa (Egypt - Arabic).
His novel, Life Sentences, published to critical acclaim by Jonathan Cape in 2021, and reached #3 Irish fiction bestsellers list. 'Life Sentences' was published in the US by David R. Godine as well as on audiobook by Blackstone, as well as in Czech translation by Paseka, in Croatian by Petrine Knjige, in Farsi by Rahetalaei, and in French by Christian Bourgois. The French edition was shortlisted for the Prix Littéraire UIAD and the Littératures Européennes Cognac Prix du Lecteurs. An edition of the book is also forthcoming from btb Verlag (Germany) in April 2025).
His work has been recognised with numerous honours, including Bursary Awards for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Cork County Council, a Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award, as well as being shortlisted for Encore Award and Costa Short Story Award shortlistings, and his short stories have appeared in more than 100 magazines and literary journals around the world, including: Agni, the Bellevue Literary Review, the Chattahoochee Review, Fiction Magazine, the Kenyon Review, the London Magazine, the Massachusetts Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, Salamander, the Saturday Evening Post, the Stinging Fly and Winter Papers.
His latest novel, The Paper Man, was published in May 2023 by Jonathan Cape (UK) & Godine (USA), and as an audiobook by Blackstone. It has also been translated into Czech, published by Paseka.
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November 30, 2019
John Banville's book of the year 2019!
"A lush, precise, poetic account of a love affair that ends the way most love affairs do. We knew O’Callaghan to be a master of the short story, and here he shows the grand reach of his powers as a novelist." Source.
One of my favourite authors praising another of my favourite authors!
- - - - - - - -
When seeking words to explore her bereavement, US poet Mary Oliver wrote*:
Billy O’Callaghan is a red bird,
singing in the trees around my home.
The circumstances of this story are slightly different from my own,
but his mellifluous melody is truer than any I can tunelessly cry.
Image: Red bird (cardinal), by http://melindaschnyder.com
I knew when I finished the second chapter (about a bereavement) that this book was one that would mark me, stay with me, and help me. “The immediate glow of [my] grief began to bruise”, but I am still a “bleeding fountain inside”, my “soul in haemorrhage”.
We need literature like this to speak to our heart, mind, and soul, for our heart, mind, and soul, when we cannot, in ways we cannot. A step towards healing. Thank you, Billy.
More is More
I've loved O'Callaghan's shorter works (see links at the end), and in this full length novel, his artist's eye, philosopher's mind, and poet's pen have a broader canvas to paint a single bleak winter day at a seedy hotel (“An illicit bed… rented by the hour”), with dazzling imagery and insight.
His use of language burnishes an apparently simple story to shine a benevolent, cathartic light, creating something painfully beautiful, utterly believable, and profoundly true.
Plot
This is primarily a story about love (grief and regrets are backdrops). Michael and Caitlin have been meeting one day a month for around 25 years: “Lovers… learn to feed on scraps.” So “Every kiss is so honed by a month’s worth of anticipation that the weeks between feel like dead rancid air.”
They meet in Coney Island: “A place for the damned to drift, waiting for their turn at nothingness” and where “Gazes here are trained to looseness”.
The novel covers the day when each has news about their spouse that will likely change everything. Alternate chapters give backstory of their childhoods, marriages, how they met, how their relationship has evolved, and how their marriages have slowed, chilled, and fractured, until they have “Settled into a state of denial”.
O’Callaghan tenderly explores formative experiences, bereavement, passion for literature, the urge to write, middle age, love, and loyalty, all without judging - because morality is rarely black and white.
The visceral but startling descriptions of light and weather that O'Callaghan always does so well have their own alchemy, conjuring something numinous and poetic in a dilapidated, prosaic setting.
Less is More
I could write pages and pages in praise of this book, but people would be less likely to get to the end of such a review, and so perhaps less likely to read the book itself. Hence my uncharacteristic brevity.
Image: View from Coney Island pier on a rainy spring day, by Sauerlandtom. (Source.)
Quotes
I could pluck a dozen beautiful blooms from every page, but they’re best appreciated in their natural habitat, not cut and isolated in a cold crystal vase. Nevertheless, here are a few:
Sky and Light
• “A bullying slob of grey [sky], running into grey, slaughtering detail and definition.”
• “A blanched, bulky light that thickens the air.”
• “The sky is turgid with the lumpen alabaster finish of a coming storm.”
• “The light of the afternoon… a soapy deadening hue.”
• “The restless light, a place of uncertain colour.”
• “Dawn… undoing the stitches of darkness.”
Writing
• “Writing was not about money and college degrees but about seeing, and finding the right words, and about making sense of things… Writing wasn’t about being good, either; it was about doing it, and wanting to do it.”
• “She caught the music inside the words.”
Love
• “‘I love you,’ he tells her, breathing the promise into her skin.”
• “The hole inside her hadn’t even been apparent until he set about filling it.”
• “Love… is the story we make up to justify all the rotten things we do.”
• “People in love… tend to live their lives with others rather than themselves in mind.”
Edges
• “Not so long ago, their bodily hungers would have abided no such trifling distractions as coffee, but the gales of time have done for a lot of edges.”
• “Accepting the particular edges of emotion that were starting to break the skin.”
• “A new intimacy entered her writing… a realism that it had not previously possessed, and real meant all the edges, all the ugly scenes… as well as the moments of beauty.”
• “At some point, her writing softened and stagnated… other things were lost. Time blurred the edges, fires burned out.”
• “And in the same way that hurt lingers as long or longer than laughter, it is the more visceral winter memories, all raw edges that continue to captivate his senses… winters… drew in the edges of the world and made the existence of the old gods seem possible again.”
• Irish words “without translation, hung almost shapeless between them, flushed by the air of its edges.”
Miscellaneous
• “These few snatched hours, once the preserve of love or something inseparably close to love, have become a pretence at satisfaction.”
• “Her beauty has always been genuine but tends towards the ambiguous, there but reliant on the moment and the right beholder.”
• “Time is a shard of glass embedded in the neck of the day.”
• “A Ferris-wheel candy-coloured exoskeleton.”
• “Once the space for delusions had sufficiently diminished”, there wasn’t much point in grief counselling.”
See Also
My reviews of O’Callaghan’s other works:
• The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, HERE. These stories include one that eventually blossomed into this novel.
• In Too Deep: And Other Short Stories, HERE.
• The Dead House (short novel), HERE.
• A Death in the Family (shortish story), HERE
* The Mary Oliver poem quoted at the top is “More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord”, which I read in the anthology, Thirst, alongside this novel. See my review of that collection HERE.
"A lush, precise, poetic account of a love affair that ends the way most love affairs do. We knew O’Callaghan to be a master of the short story, and here he shows the grand reach of his powers as a novelist." Source.
One of my favourite authors praising another of my favourite authors!
- - - - - - - -
When seeking words to explore her bereavement, US poet Mary Oliver wrote*:
It’s close to hopeless,
for what I want to say the red-bird
has said already, and better, in a thousand trees.
Billy O’Callaghan is a red bird,
singing in the trees around my home.
The circumstances of this story are slightly different from my own,
but his mellifluous melody is truer than any I can tunelessly cry.
Image: Red bird (cardinal), by http://melindaschnyder.com
I knew when I finished the second chapter (about a bereavement) that this book was one that would mark me, stay with me, and help me. “The immediate glow of [my] grief began to bruise”, but I am still a “bleeding fountain inside”, my “soul in haemorrhage”.
We need literature like this to speak to our heart, mind, and soul, for our heart, mind, and soul, when we cannot, in ways we cannot. A step towards healing. Thank you, Billy.
More is More
I've loved O'Callaghan's shorter works (see links at the end), and in this full length novel, his artist's eye, philosopher's mind, and poet's pen have a broader canvas to paint a single bleak winter day at a seedy hotel (“An illicit bed… rented by the hour”), with dazzling imagery and insight.
His use of language burnishes an apparently simple story to shine a benevolent, cathartic light, creating something painfully beautiful, utterly believable, and profoundly true.
Plot
This is primarily a story about love (grief and regrets are backdrops). Michael and Caitlin have been meeting one day a month for around 25 years: “Lovers… learn to feed on scraps.” So “Every kiss is so honed by a month’s worth of anticipation that the weeks between feel like dead rancid air.”
They meet in Coney Island: “A place for the damned to drift, waiting for their turn at nothingness” and where “Gazes here are trained to looseness”.
The novel covers the day when each has news about their spouse that will likely change everything. Alternate chapters give backstory of their childhoods, marriages, how they met, how their relationship has evolved, and how their marriages have slowed, chilled, and fractured, until they have “Settled into a state of denial”.
O’Callaghan tenderly explores formative experiences, bereavement, passion for literature, the urge to write, middle age, love, and loyalty, all without judging - because morality is rarely black and white.
The visceral but startling descriptions of light and weather that O'Callaghan always does so well have their own alchemy, conjuring something numinous and poetic in a dilapidated, prosaic setting.
Less is More
I could write pages and pages in praise of this book, but people would be less likely to get to the end of such a review, and so perhaps less likely to read the book itself. Hence my uncharacteristic brevity.
Image: View from Coney Island pier on a rainy spring day, by Sauerlandtom. (Source.)
Quotes
I could pluck a dozen beautiful blooms from every page, but they’re best appreciated in their natural habitat, not cut and isolated in a cold crystal vase. Nevertheless, here are a few:
Sky and Light
• “A bullying slob of grey [sky], running into grey, slaughtering detail and definition.”
• “A blanched, bulky light that thickens the air.”
• “The sky is turgid with the lumpen alabaster finish of a coming storm.”
• “The light of the afternoon… a soapy deadening hue.”
• “The restless light, a place of uncertain colour.”
• “Dawn… undoing the stitches of darkness.”
Writing
• “Writing was not about money and college degrees but about seeing, and finding the right words, and about making sense of things… Writing wasn’t about being good, either; it was about doing it, and wanting to do it.”
• “She caught the music inside the words.”
Love
• “‘I love you,’ he tells her, breathing the promise into her skin.”
• “The hole inside her hadn’t even been apparent until he set about filling it.”
• “Love… is the story we make up to justify all the rotten things we do.”
• “People in love… tend to live their lives with others rather than themselves in mind.”
Edges
• “Not so long ago, their bodily hungers would have abided no such trifling distractions as coffee, but the gales of time have done for a lot of edges.”
• “Accepting the particular edges of emotion that were starting to break the skin.”
• “A new intimacy entered her writing… a realism that it had not previously possessed, and real meant all the edges, all the ugly scenes… as well as the moments of beauty.”
• “At some point, her writing softened and stagnated… other things were lost. Time blurred the edges, fires burned out.”
• “And in the same way that hurt lingers as long or longer than laughter, it is the more visceral winter memories, all raw edges that continue to captivate his senses… winters… drew in the edges of the world and made the existence of the old gods seem possible again.”
• Irish words “without translation, hung almost shapeless between them, flushed by the air of its edges.”
Miscellaneous
• “These few snatched hours, once the preserve of love or something inseparably close to love, have become a pretence at satisfaction.”
• “Her beauty has always been genuine but tends towards the ambiguous, there but reliant on the moment and the right beholder.”
• “Time is a shard of glass embedded in the neck of the day.”
• “A Ferris-wheel candy-coloured exoskeleton.”
• “Once the space for delusions had sufficiently diminished”, there wasn’t much point in grief counselling.”
See Also
My reviews of O’Callaghan’s other works:
• The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, HERE. These stories include one that eventually blossomed into this novel.
• In Too Deep: And Other Short Stories, HERE.
• The Dead House (short novel), HERE.
• A Death in the Family (shortish story), HERE
* The Mary Oliver poem quoted at the top is “More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord”, which I read in the anthology, Thirst, alongside this novel. See my review of that collection HERE.
April 3, 2019
Adultery is hard to condone but their love is hard to deny. Michael and Caitlin meet one day each month as they have for twenty five years, deeply in love with each other but married to others. This is an introspective and beautifully written story that takes place on the day of one of those meetings, on a freezing, blustery day at a hotel near Coney Island. In alternating points of view, we get the story of their present circumstances, how they met, what their marriages are like, traumatic experiences in their lives, flashbacks to their childhoods. The air in the room is heavy with them , their pasts hovering, and their present outside of this hotel room threatening the calm, quiet intensity of the afternoon. Conversation is minimal, but meaningful and I’m amazed at how much we know about these characters in this book which is not very lengthy. It’s about marriages, about loss and grief and lost chances as life goes on and they age, but mostly about love. It’s sensuous - yes of course their physical connection, knowing the terrain of their bodies even as age has changed them, but even more so in their emotional connection. Beautiful, sad, moving.
I read an advanced copy so it’s possible that these quotes may change in the final version. I hope not . The writing is beautiful and I just have to share some of it.
“This afternoon, Coney Island feels like the end of the world, the last bastion just short of some great abyss, a place for the damned to drift, waiting their turn at nothingness.”
“Gleams of pleasure can be had even from those times rightfully owed to sadness. It is simply a matter of sifting for gold, and the passage of time grants wisdom of a kind.”
“Time has deepened the understanding each had of the other, an understanding, free of judgement, that counts want, need, desire among its blessings, as well as a knowledge of what lies within the other’s heart. Fires can blaze and fires can smolder. now though, wanting is no longer in itself enough. Something is about to be broken. “
I received an advanced copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.
I read an advanced copy so it’s possible that these quotes may change in the final version. I hope not . The writing is beautiful and I just have to share some of it.
“This afternoon, Coney Island feels like the end of the world, the last bastion just short of some great abyss, a place for the damned to drift, waiting their turn at nothingness.”
“Gleams of pleasure can be had even from those times rightfully owed to sadness. It is simply a matter of sifting for gold, and the passage of time grants wisdom of a kind.”
“Time has deepened the understanding each had of the other, an understanding, free of judgement, that counts want, need, desire among its blessings, as well as a knowledge of what lies within the other’s heart. Fires can blaze and fires can smolder. now though, wanting is no longer in itself enough. Something is about to be broken. “
I received an advanced copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.
November 21, 2019
Ah, but remember that the city is a funny place
Something like a circus or a sewer
And just remember, different people have peculiar tastes
And the glory of love, the glory of love
The glory of love, might see you through.
(Lou Reed)
Having read a few enthusiast five stars reviews, I decided to take this novel home from the library. As the novel is pitched as a ‘piercing meditation on middle-age and the passing of time’, several friends praised the masterful stylish prose of the author and the title reminded me of the eponymous songs of both Lou Reed and Tom Waits, I had high hopes for this love story.
After a promising start with some thoughtful observations on dreams, time, choices and mourning, I was in the mood to simply sink into an evocation of life’s bittersweetness and (why not, maybe by proxy) bask in the intimacy and tenderness of the encounter of a middle-aged man and woman meeting each other once a month for more than twenty years, be it stealthily, as Michael and Caitlin are married to others. In this stage of life I am a little more interested in reading about a relationship between people who are inevitably a bit more scarred and bruised by life than about the ecstasy of young lovers dancing with the daffodils in a lush meadow. As both lovers happen to stand on though crossroads of life having to make decisions, the theme reminded me of the epigraph Raymond Carver used for one of his poems: Now for the other life. The one without mistakes.
If you have read the book and loved it or if you plan to read it, read no further. I am aware I am in the minority on this novel. Unfortunately I have to admit it didn’t work for me, at all.
This story simply fell flat for me. Despite personal stories of gloomy childhoods and loneliness, Michael and Caitlin and their dilemma’s left me cold. The often pointless metaphors, pseudo-wisdoms and musings on love came to irritate me that much I had to slog myself through it. O’Callaghan’s style struck me mostly as verbose, filling pages with trite observations which came in like thin air. Maybe the repetitive descriptions of decay of the middle-aged male body rubbed me the wrong way. Or the fact that both Michael’s spouse Barbara and his lover Caitlin are depicted as ripe but still ravishing women (in contrast with other women in the novel, who are – o horrible! – fat – and gosh, does one really need commonplace thoughts like ‘Beautiful women often age badly, and trying too hard somehow only quickens the rate of deterioration’?). To my taste the story sounded a tad too much as a clumsy attempt to reassure us - poor fragile, insecure and maybe lonely middle-aged people. Making love at middle-age, no fear, gentlemen, not all breasts suffered from the gravitational pull (yet). And don’t worry, your stomach which now presses and gently pummels your lover with every embrace will be no obstacle, you will be adored nonetheless for who you really are. Though I could relate to the need of carving out precious moments when life has been mostly unfulfilling, even spending just this single long day in the company of this couple couldn’t keep my interest. But I am tired and weary (and perhaps cynic) – I could sleep for a thousand years.
On the plus side, the book pointed me towards a series of atmospheric photographs of Yunghi Kim on Coney Island in winter.
Something like a circus or a sewer
And just remember, different people have peculiar tastes
And the glory of love, the glory of love
The glory of love, might see you through.
(Lou Reed)
Having read a few enthusiast five stars reviews, I decided to take this novel home from the library. As the novel is pitched as a ‘piercing meditation on middle-age and the passing of time’, several friends praised the masterful stylish prose of the author and the title reminded me of the eponymous songs of both Lou Reed and Tom Waits, I had high hopes for this love story.
After a promising start with some thoughtful observations on dreams, time, choices and mourning, I was in the mood to simply sink into an evocation of life’s bittersweetness and (why not, maybe by proxy) bask in the intimacy and tenderness of the encounter of a middle-aged man and woman meeting each other once a month for more than twenty years, be it stealthily, as Michael and Caitlin are married to others. In this stage of life I am a little more interested in reading about a relationship between people who are inevitably a bit more scarred and bruised by life than about the ecstasy of young lovers dancing with the daffodils in a lush meadow. As both lovers happen to stand on though crossroads of life having to make decisions, the theme reminded me of the epigraph Raymond Carver used for one of his poems: Now for the other life. The one without mistakes.
If you have read the book and loved it or if you plan to read it, read no further. I am aware I am in the minority on this novel. Unfortunately I have to admit it didn’t work for me, at all.
This story simply fell flat for me. Despite personal stories of gloomy childhoods and loneliness, Michael and Caitlin and their dilemma’s left me cold. The often pointless metaphors, pseudo-wisdoms and musings on love came to irritate me that much I had to slog myself through it. O’Callaghan’s style struck me mostly as verbose, filling pages with trite observations which came in like thin air. Maybe the repetitive descriptions of decay of the middle-aged male body rubbed me the wrong way. Or the fact that both Michael’s spouse Barbara and his lover Caitlin are depicted as ripe but still ravishing women (in contrast with other women in the novel, who are – o horrible! – fat – and gosh, does one really need commonplace thoughts like ‘Beautiful women often age badly, and trying too hard somehow only quickens the rate of deterioration’?). To my taste the story sounded a tad too much as a clumsy attempt to reassure us - poor fragile, insecure and maybe lonely middle-aged people. Making love at middle-age, no fear, gentlemen, not all breasts suffered from the gravitational pull (yet). And don’t worry, your stomach which now presses and gently pummels your lover with every embrace will be no obstacle, you will be adored nonetheless for who you really are. Though I could relate to the need of carving out precious moments when life has been mostly unfulfilling, even spending just this single long day in the company of this couple couldn’t keep my interest. But I am tired and weary (and perhaps cynic) – I could sleep for a thousand years.
On the plus side, the book pointed me towards a series of atmospheric photographs of Yunghi Kim on Coney Island in winter.
February 29, 2020
4.5 stars
"Sometimes it seems unclear which of her two lives is the greater reality. Once she has slipped back into her homely skin, the afternoons spent with Michael, heightened by their rationing, take on the sensations of a dream. Against their memory, the world feels staid, and empty."
Caitlyn may not understand which life is the greater reality – the one spent with Michael an afternoon each month in a seedy motel room on Coney Island, or the one spent with her husband the rest of those days for the past twenty-five years. Michael too has a separate existence with his wife, Barb. A life that cleaved apart due to unbearable grief. Somehow it seems pretty clear that only lies prevail at home while the truths are the words expressed in that damned depressing, rented room.
"The room is clean and plain but determinedly sterile, with all trace of romance having been surgically removed, the sort of room suited to women on the run, and travelling salesmen, and those who wish to hide a while without being found, those who need time alone to think of good or even bad reasons why they shouldn’t hang themselves in the closet or pull a razor blade across their wrists."
This is a highly introspective novel full of lush language and the delicious, gray moral ground between ‘right and wrong.’ The complexities of marriage, love and relationships are put under the microscope and painstakingly examined. You’re not going to find any real answers here, however, despite the intensity of that scrutiny. Author Billy O’Callaghan, with exquisite language, tells it like it is. Love is not simple, and there is no secret formula for doing the right thing. How the hell do most of us make it through from one day to the next? It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, but nearly impossible to climb back out again. The setting for Michael and Caitlyn’s illicit trysts is actually quite perfect.
"Because Coney Island feels done for. A rot has set in. And yet, being out here on a day like this still feels good. So fit for broken things, it has become their place. The best may be lost but an air of romance remains, and settling is a matter of choice."
The novel spans the length of just a single day, but we get flashbacks into both Michael and Caitlyn’s pasts - their difficult and often lonely childhoods leading up to their now estranged marriages. There are some very moving scenes of bereavement and regret that are written with such beautiful and heart-rending prose that I won’t soon forget them.
"… her crying was unbearable, the jagged shudders of breath, the whine that came stabbing up out of her in gouts from some deep place. Her soul in haemorrhage."
Now for my one little gripe with this book. I am wild for introspection. But once in a while, even I became a bit overwhelmed by it. Michael and Caitlyn are middle-aged. Okay, I get it. No one is quite as scrumptious as they were in their twenties. But I got a little tired of hearing about Michael’s extra weight and sagging and fading, while Caitlyn remains radiant, not cursed by the effects of time and gravity. I mean, I’m thrilled for her, but I couldn’t help but think that a little bit of this was due to the author’s fantasy of sorts. Naturally, she loved him just the same, as she should, despite his flaws ;) I really only needed to be told once!
Nitpicking aside, I was completely consumed by this book and the gorgeous writing. Like all Irish literature I’ve so far had the pleasure of reading, this one is laced with a heavy dose of melancholy and is a treat for those that revel in self-reflection. I would highly recommend this to anyone that delights in the same.
"Universal connectedness was a comforting thought, but the greater truth seemed to be that every soul spun through its days and nights alone."
"Don't give me those eyes 'cause you know me and I can't say no to you
We can't have each other even if we wanted to
In another life, darling, I'll do anything to be with you
We can't have each other even if we wanted to…." – Don’t Give Me Those Eyes, James Blunt
"Sometimes it seems unclear which of her two lives is the greater reality. Once she has slipped back into her homely skin, the afternoons spent with Michael, heightened by their rationing, take on the sensations of a dream. Against their memory, the world feels staid, and empty."
Caitlyn may not understand which life is the greater reality – the one spent with Michael an afternoon each month in a seedy motel room on Coney Island, or the one spent with her husband the rest of those days for the past twenty-five years. Michael too has a separate existence with his wife, Barb. A life that cleaved apart due to unbearable grief. Somehow it seems pretty clear that only lies prevail at home while the truths are the words expressed in that damned depressing, rented room.
"The room is clean and plain but determinedly sterile, with all trace of romance having been surgically removed, the sort of room suited to women on the run, and travelling salesmen, and those who wish to hide a while without being found, those who need time alone to think of good or even bad reasons why they shouldn’t hang themselves in the closet or pull a razor blade across their wrists."
This is a highly introspective novel full of lush language and the delicious, gray moral ground between ‘right and wrong.’ The complexities of marriage, love and relationships are put under the microscope and painstakingly examined. You’re not going to find any real answers here, however, despite the intensity of that scrutiny. Author Billy O’Callaghan, with exquisite language, tells it like it is. Love is not simple, and there is no secret formula for doing the right thing. How the hell do most of us make it through from one day to the next? It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, but nearly impossible to climb back out again. The setting for Michael and Caitlyn’s illicit trysts is actually quite perfect.
"Because Coney Island feels done for. A rot has set in. And yet, being out here on a day like this still feels good. So fit for broken things, it has become their place. The best may be lost but an air of romance remains, and settling is a matter of choice."
The novel spans the length of just a single day, but we get flashbacks into both Michael and Caitlyn’s pasts - their difficult and often lonely childhoods leading up to their now estranged marriages. There are some very moving scenes of bereavement and regret that are written with such beautiful and heart-rending prose that I won’t soon forget them.
"… her crying was unbearable, the jagged shudders of breath, the whine that came stabbing up out of her in gouts from some deep place. Her soul in haemorrhage."
Now for my one little gripe with this book. I am wild for introspection. But once in a while, even I became a bit overwhelmed by it. Michael and Caitlyn are middle-aged. Okay, I get it. No one is quite as scrumptious as they were in their twenties. But I got a little tired of hearing about Michael’s extra weight and sagging and fading, while Caitlyn remains radiant, not cursed by the effects of time and gravity. I mean, I’m thrilled for her, but I couldn’t help but think that a little bit of this was due to the author’s fantasy of sorts. Naturally, she loved him just the same, as she should, despite his flaws ;) I really only needed to be told once!
Nitpicking aside, I was completely consumed by this book and the gorgeous writing. Like all Irish literature I’ve so far had the pleasure of reading, this one is laced with a heavy dose of melancholy and is a treat for those that revel in self-reflection. I would highly recommend this to anyone that delights in the same.
"Universal connectedness was a comforting thought, but the greater truth seemed to be that every soul spun through its days and nights alone."
"Don't give me those eyes 'cause you know me and I can't say no to you
We can't have each other even if we wanted to
In another life, darling, I'll do anything to be with you
We can't have each other even if we wanted to…." – Don’t Give Me Those Eyes, James Blunt
January 17, 2020
Kindle $1.99 Special Today...
I thought the writing was beautiful.... the imagery vivid... and the sensitive story so very human.
A bargain of a price.
Coney Island is their place.
“The best may have been lost but an air of romance remains”.
Caitlin and Michael, both in their 40s... aware of aging ... have been meeting every Tuesday, once a month for twenty years.
They are both married to other people.
Michael’s wife, Barb, is scheduled for 55 cycles of chemo therapy. Words like aggressive, and metastasis are not encouraging.
Years ago, Michael and Barb lost their 14-week old baby boy named James Matthew. Their loss was so devastating- it changed their relationship in ways it never returned...each dealing with their loss differently. Michael turned to bodily muscle work. Later he hit the sport bars. It was at one of these places where he met Caitlin. She was just 22 when they first met and already married.
As for, Barb....the loss of their child manifested itself in small violent explosions.
When she was like that, all Michael could do was hold back and try to ride it out.
We get a background story of Caitlin... allowing us to think of why she entered the affair with Michael, too.
And more details about Michael’s growing years.
Now in their forties, Michael is aware that life has shifted from thrills to comforts. Caitlin was once his thrill... and now his comfort.
Michael and Caitlin stand a while, just gazing at the ocean, holding hands.
They are sheltering themselves from a storm. And for a moment they believe that the world has been made to exist entirely for their benefit, and that nothing else matters beyond their happiness.
Coney Island feels done for. Every stall and pitch is shut down. Even during high season, the place only ever runs at half speed any more. A rot has set in. Yet their place still feels good. It’s even fitting for the broken things that are happening in their own individual lives.
Winds were blowing muddy with a threat of snow. The boardwalk, with memories of cotton candy, fire eating unicyclists, fried food, sweet and salty smells in the air, and the screams of teenage boys roughhousing bikini-clad girls don’t feel like that many years ago.
Caitlin knows that their day ahead holds darkness. There are things that need discussing between she and Michael.
I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story other than end with this one quote.
“It’s natural, of course, to reminisce, especially as a heart settles into middle-age, and regret is a flavour
familiar to anyone who is ever fled one life in the chase for another”.
I really enjoyed this book.
It allowed me to think about those that cheat, lie, and deceive and how their actions cause pain to others.
.... I definitely don’t condone cheaters....
but....
this book delivers on its pure humanity.
I reflected on why this couple did what they did .. my judgements at arms length.
The writing was gorgeous and intimate, capturing a very internal world. The realism is beautifully rendered, examining broken hearts and the impact that it has.
Thank you HarperCollins publishing, Netgalley, and Billy O’Callaghan
I thought the writing was beautiful.... the imagery vivid... and the sensitive story so very human.
A bargain of a price.
Coney Island is their place.
“The best may have been lost but an air of romance remains”.
Caitlin and Michael, both in their 40s... aware of aging ... have been meeting every Tuesday, once a month for twenty years.
They are both married to other people.
Michael’s wife, Barb, is scheduled for 55 cycles of chemo therapy. Words like aggressive, and metastasis are not encouraging.
Years ago, Michael and Barb lost their 14-week old baby boy named James Matthew. Their loss was so devastating- it changed their relationship in ways it never returned...each dealing with their loss differently. Michael turned to bodily muscle work. Later he hit the sport bars. It was at one of these places where he met Caitlin. She was just 22 when they first met and already married.
As for, Barb....the loss of their child manifested itself in small violent explosions.
When she was like that, all Michael could do was hold back and try to ride it out.
We get a background story of Caitlin... allowing us to think of why she entered the affair with Michael, too.
And more details about Michael’s growing years.
Now in their forties, Michael is aware that life has shifted from thrills to comforts. Caitlin was once his thrill... and now his comfort.
Michael and Caitlin stand a while, just gazing at the ocean, holding hands.
They are sheltering themselves from a storm. And for a moment they believe that the world has been made to exist entirely for their benefit, and that nothing else matters beyond their happiness.
Coney Island feels done for. Every stall and pitch is shut down. Even during high season, the place only ever runs at half speed any more. A rot has set in. Yet their place still feels good. It’s even fitting for the broken things that are happening in their own individual lives.
Winds were blowing muddy with a threat of snow. The boardwalk, with memories of cotton candy, fire eating unicyclists, fried food, sweet and salty smells in the air, and the screams of teenage boys roughhousing bikini-clad girls don’t feel like that many years ago.
Caitlin knows that their day ahead holds darkness. There are things that need discussing between she and Michael.
I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story other than end with this one quote.
“It’s natural, of course, to reminisce, especially as a heart settles into middle-age, and regret is a flavour
familiar to anyone who is ever fled one life in the chase for another”.
I really enjoyed this book.
It allowed me to think about those that cheat, lie, and deceive and how their actions cause pain to others.
.... I definitely don’t condone cheaters....
but....
this book delivers on its pure humanity.
I reflected on why this couple did what they did .. my judgements at arms length.
The writing was gorgeous and intimate, capturing a very internal world. The realism is beautifully rendered, examining broken hearts and the impact that it has.
Thank you HarperCollins publishing, Netgalley, and Billy O’Callaghan
April 27, 2019
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.
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.
March 24, 2019
’And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows’
--And So It Goes, Billy Joel, Songwriters: Billy Joel
”The air out here is mean with cold. It was bitter on the journey out from Manhattan too, but nothing like this. This is bleakness without respite. “
So begins O’Callaghan’s My Coney Island Baby which shares the lives of a couple in their middle years who have been secretly meeting for twenty-some years, once a month in a room with ”a bed rented by the hour.” Between conversations and shared thoughts we begin to learn more of their story as a couple, and their stories as individuals married to others.
”Out here, sheltering from a storm, it is almost possible to believe that the world has been made to exist entirely for their benefit, and that nothing else matters beyond their happiness.”
You might think this is a story about this ongoing affair, but there is much more to this than just this one day spent together. There is the realization that they are no longer “young,” yet they are wedded to the lives they created in their early twenties. As they notice the ways their bodies have changed since those early days when they were filled with the sureness of their vision for their future, they see how their lives have changed, as well. Gone is the passion that ruled their younger years, lost in part to the disappearance of so many choices they thought would wait for them.
”Time makes us afraid. Maybe it’s just that we pick up so many anchors along the way.”
This seems to be the only means they have to cling to the belief that someone sees them for who they are, or who they believe themselves to be, and yet, there seem to be little regrets for the time they have not spent together. It is understood, unsaid, that these days that have shown them the only sense of being really known and understood are held as prized moments.
”The room, he decides, will be sufficient for their needs, but only because they have carried love in here with them, in them.”
Both have news to share, but time passes, and other thoughts are shared, or observed. There is a sense of calm that permeates the narrative, sharing their affecting stories in quietly thoughtful moments. Thoughts that cover the years that they’ve known each other, their separate lives, and their respective spouses, the bruises inflicted by life, and the ever present ticking of the clock.
”So fit for broken things, it has become their place.”
Billy O’Callaghan’s writing is subtle but sublime, graceful, and emanates an aura of discernment and sensitivity.
Pub Date: 09 Apr 2019
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Harper Collins Publishers / Harper
And you’re the only one who knows’
--And So It Goes, Billy Joel, Songwriters: Billy Joel
”The air out here is mean with cold. It was bitter on the journey out from Manhattan too, but nothing like this. This is bleakness without respite. “
So begins O’Callaghan’s My Coney Island Baby which shares the lives of a couple in their middle years who have been secretly meeting for twenty-some years, once a month in a room with ”a bed rented by the hour.” Between conversations and shared thoughts we begin to learn more of their story as a couple, and their stories as individuals married to others.
”Out here, sheltering from a storm, it is almost possible to believe that the world has been made to exist entirely for their benefit, and that nothing else matters beyond their happiness.”
You might think this is a story about this ongoing affair, but there is much more to this than just this one day spent together. There is the realization that they are no longer “young,” yet they are wedded to the lives they created in their early twenties. As they notice the ways their bodies have changed since those early days when they were filled with the sureness of their vision for their future, they see how their lives have changed, as well. Gone is the passion that ruled their younger years, lost in part to the disappearance of so many choices they thought would wait for them.
”Time makes us afraid. Maybe it’s just that we pick up so many anchors along the way.”
This seems to be the only means they have to cling to the belief that someone sees them for who they are, or who they believe themselves to be, and yet, there seem to be little regrets for the time they have not spent together. It is understood, unsaid, that these days that have shown them the only sense of being really known and understood are held as prized moments.
”The room, he decides, will be sufficient for their needs, but only because they have carried love in here with them, in them.”
Both have news to share, but time passes, and other thoughts are shared, or observed. There is a sense of calm that permeates the narrative, sharing their affecting stories in quietly thoughtful moments. Thoughts that cover the years that they’ve known each other, their separate lives, and their respective spouses, the bruises inflicted by life, and the ever present ticking of the clock.
”So fit for broken things, it has become their place.”
Billy O’Callaghan’s writing is subtle but sublime, graceful, and emanates an aura of discernment and sensitivity.
Pub Date: 09 Apr 2019
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Harper Collins Publishers / Harper
May 26, 2020
...right and wrong are not always laid in straight lines.
Read this for the words, for the turns of phrase. Risk your heart, the beauty of it is stunning. Appreciating the value of small things, tasting a word as it is spoken, a mouth finally giving up a smile, the comfort of holding hands and saying nothing at all. Couples who are together, yet separate, sharing their isolation.
Read this for the words, for the turns of phrase. Risk your heart, the beauty of it is stunning. Appreciating the value of small things, tasting a word as it is spoken, a mouth finally giving up a smile, the comfort of holding hands and saying nothing at all. Couples who are together, yet separate, sharing their isolation.
March 23, 2019
Two middle-aged lovers brave the deserted, wintry boardwalk of Coney Island. The wind is howling. A snowstorm has been forecast. Michael and Caitlin walk hand in hand to a seedy hotel for their once monthly day of emotional and physical sharing. They have done so for twenty-five years. It started with a chance meeting at a bar. Michael was reeling from the death of his fourteen week old son. His wife, Barbara was "entrenched" in a state of isolation while Michael worked two jobs trying not to "feel". Caitlin thought that her husband, Thomas considered her to be "...another bullet point on a long list, and never a priority". Both Michael and Caitlin got married in their twenties but found, what was seemingly true love, outside of marriage.
"It is almost possible to believe that the world has been made to exist entirely for their benefit, and that nothing else matters beyond their happiness". For twenty-five years, Michael and Caitlin have cherished their "couple time", sharing their most intimate memories, hopes and dreams. In Coney Island, they are far from hearth and home. They can stand gazing at the Atlantic Ocean but Barbara, a "ghostly presence...has existed along the periphery". Thomas has as well. As for Michael and Caitlin, "Time makes us afraid...we pick up so many anchors along the way". What does the future hold in store for them?
Michael and Caitlin seemed very much in love. In their twenties, their clandestine trysts were risk taking ventures. Now, well into his forties, "He watches her...and, feels himself falling for her all over again". On Caitlin's part, his now overweight frame is of no consequence. She "...savours the details of who he is..."
"My Coney Island Baby" by Billy O'Callaghan is a sensitive portrayal of middle-aged love. Michael and Caitlin were flawed individuals who accepted each other's imperfections. They were imprisoned in their marriages but arguably prisoners within the confines of their hotel room. They never had a chance to fly.
Thank you HarperCollins Publishers and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "My Coney Island Baby".
"It is almost possible to believe that the world has been made to exist entirely for their benefit, and that nothing else matters beyond their happiness". For twenty-five years, Michael and Caitlin have cherished their "couple time", sharing their most intimate memories, hopes and dreams. In Coney Island, they are far from hearth and home. They can stand gazing at the Atlantic Ocean but Barbara, a "ghostly presence...has existed along the periphery". Thomas has as well. As for Michael and Caitlin, "Time makes us afraid...we pick up so many anchors along the way". What does the future hold in store for them?
Michael and Caitlin seemed very much in love. In their twenties, their clandestine trysts were risk taking ventures. Now, well into his forties, "He watches her...and, feels himself falling for her all over again". On Caitlin's part, his now overweight frame is of no consequence. She "...savours the details of who he is..."
"My Coney Island Baby" by Billy O'Callaghan is a sensitive portrayal of middle-aged love. Michael and Caitlin were flawed individuals who accepted each other's imperfections. They were imprisoned in their marriages but arguably prisoners within the confines of their hotel room. They never had a chance to fly.
Thank you HarperCollins Publishers and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "My Coney Island Baby".
April 16, 2019
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.
April 4, 2019
No wonder this author is well-loved! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
My Coney Island Baby is my first Billy O’Callaghan novel, and this author is highly recommended by several of my Goodreads friends.
Michael and Caitlin are each married to other people, but they have met monthly in a run down hotel in Coney Island. Their love affair has continued for years and has enabled them to stay in the comfort and routine of their unhappy marriages.
During one month’s visit, there’s a storm brewing outside and also a storm brewing inside. Michael’s wife has cancer, and Caitlin’s husband’s job will be relocating him to the Midwest. It’s at this juncture that the two must make a decision about their future together.
Overall, I soaked in this author’s take on middle-aged, forbidden love. There’s a sensitivity to the writing that I picked up on immediately, and it connected me to these characters and the author’s depiction of them.
I normally might question two lovers in a lifelong affair, but when O’Callaghan navigates the storyline, I understood where each flawed person was coming from, the bits and pieces of life that add up to overbearing challenges, and the fallible decisions we all make. There is beauty here in the forlorn, in the decay of the hotel, and in the hearts of these average human beings.
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com
My Coney Island Baby is my first Billy O’Callaghan novel, and this author is highly recommended by several of my Goodreads friends.
Michael and Caitlin are each married to other people, but they have met monthly in a run down hotel in Coney Island. Their love affair has continued for years and has enabled them to stay in the comfort and routine of their unhappy marriages.
During one month’s visit, there’s a storm brewing outside and also a storm brewing inside. Michael’s wife has cancer, and Caitlin’s husband’s job will be relocating him to the Midwest. It’s at this juncture that the two must make a decision about their future together.
Overall, I soaked in this author’s take on middle-aged, forbidden love. There’s a sensitivity to the writing that I picked up on immediately, and it connected me to these characters and the author’s depiction of them.
I normally might question two lovers in a lifelong affair, but when O’Callaghan navigates the storyline, I understood where each flawed person was coming from, the bits and pieces of life that add up to overbearing challenges, and the fallible decisions we all make. There is beauty here in the forlorn, in the decay of the hotel, and in the hearts of these average human beings.
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com
Read
December 19, 2018DNF at 38%
I’m leaving this one unrated, because I have immensely enjoyed previous works by this author. This just wasn’t for me.
This novel comes from a short story in the author’s book The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind. I loved the short story in the previous book, but this just seemed to go on in a different way.. felt padded, as another reviewer stated... when I saw that word mentioned, I’m like, yes... that’s exactly it, just going on to fill pages.
This one was rough for me to review, as I wanted to love it!
I do want to thank Edelweiss and HarperCollins for the opportunity to read this Arc!
I’m leaving this one unrated, because I have immensely enjoyed previous works by this author. This just wasn’t for me.
This novel comes from a short story in the author’s book The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind. I loved the short story in the previous book, but this just seemed to go on in a different way.. felt padded, as another reviewer stated... when I saw that word mentioned, I’m like, yes... that’s exactly it, just going on to fill pages.
This one was rough for me to review, as I wanted to love it!
I do want to thank Edelweiss and HarperCollins for the opportunity to read this Arc!
November 24, 2019
My Coney Island Baby captured an afternoon of a couple’s tryst in a dingy pit-stop hotel room on Coney Island. O’Callaghan told a non-judgmental and tender story about adultery and the complexity of love.
For twenty five years, Michael and Caitlin have been meeting secretly once a month on Coney Island. Both are unhappy in their married lives and the monthly rendezvous is the lifeline that keeps them afloat. A story like this gives a real face to the fragility of marriage even for couples who love each other dearly. Michael and his wife Barbara lost their infant son. The enormity of their grief entrenched each of them in their isolation. Caitlin and her husband too led separate lives with their own preoccupations casting them adrift. For Michael and Caitlin, it seems ‘Love was real, but a delicate flower in need of constant nurturing. It bloomed for a while in brilliant ways, but too easily wilted.’
What does the future hold for Michael and Catlin who are now in middle age? On the domestic front, new challenges are beginning to test the tenacity of their love and the durability of their monthly trysts. O’Callaghan’s opening lines foreshadowed what was to come: ‘This afternoon, Coney Island feels like the end of the world, the last bastion just short of some great abyss, a place for the damned to drift, waiting their turn at nothingness.’ We are reminded that Coney Island is no longer a popular attraction as in its heydays: ‘Coney Island feels done for. A rot has set in... So fit for broken things, it has become their place.’
The reader is put in a difficult place in relation to the protagonists. Michael and Caitlin have a love for each other that is genuine and appears even needful. To Caitlin, ‘You learn to make the best of any situation, or else there is death.’ And ‘The hole inside her hadn’t even been apparent until he set about filling it.' For Michael, ‘Until he met her, he was the living dead, and the only time he wanted to be himself instead of someone else, anyone else, was when she stepped into his day.’ And yet, breaking faith with a spouse is never right. They do not deny it. From Caitlin’s perspective, ‘What she and Michael have together could very well pass for love, but it is also, by its very definition, adultery. They might prefer to define it otherwise, but there can be no denying the fact of that dirty little word.’
Michael and Caitlin’s quandary was skillfully unraveled and we are offered glimpses to both their early family life that afforded some understanding of their emotional vulnerability. The back story of Michael’s relationship with his father in Inishbofin, a small island off the coast of Connemara in Ireland was especially moving.
O’Callaghan writes beautifully and there are prose passages I read and re-read for their ability to give expression to the intractable and unutterable complexity of human emotions. This is my first book by O’Callaghan and I look forward to reading more of his work.
For twenty five years, Michael and Caitlin have been meeting secretly once a month on Coney Island. Both are unhappy in their married lives and the monthly rendezvous is the lifeline that keeps them afloat. A story like this gives a real face to the fragility of marriage even for couples who love each other dearly. Michael and his wife Barbara lost their infant son. The enormity of their grief entrenched each of them in their isolation. Caitlin and her husband too led separate lives with their own preoccupations casting them adrift. For Michael and Caitlin, it seems ‘Love was real, but a delicate flower in need of constant nurturing. It bloomed for a while in brilliant ways, but too easily wilted.’
What does the future hold for Michael and Catlin who are now in middle age? On the domestic front, new challenges are beginning to test the tenacity of their love and the durability of their monthly trysts. O’Callaghan’s opening lines foreshadowed what was to come: ‘This afternoon, Coney Island feels like the end of the world, the last bastion just short of some great abyss, a place for the damned to drift, waiting their turn at nothingness.’ We are reminded that Coney Island is no longer a popular attraction as in its heydays: ‘Coney Island feels done for. A rot has set in... So fit for broken things, it has become their place.’
The reader is put in a difficult place in relation to the protagonists. Michael and Caitlin have a love for each other that is genuine and appears even needful. To Caitlin, ‘You learn to make the best of any situation, or else there is death.’ And ‘The hole inside her hadn’t even been apparent until he set about filling it.' For Michael, ‘Until he met her, he was the living dead, and the only time he wanted to be himself instead of someone else, anyone else, was when she stepped into his day.’ And yet, breaking faith with a spouse is never right. They do not deny it. From Caitlin’s perspective, ‘What she and Michael have together could very well pass for love, but it is also, by its very definition, adultery. They might prefer to define it otherwise, but there can be no denying the fact of that dirty little word.’
Michael and Caitlin’s quandary was skillfully unraveled and we are offered glimpses to both their early family life that afforded some understanding of their emotional vulnerability. The back story of Michael’s relationship with his father in Inishbofin, a small island off the coast of Connemara in Ireland was especially moving.
O’Callaghan writes beautifully and there are prose passages I read and re-read for their ability to give expression to the intractable and unutterable complexity of human emotions. This is my first book by O’Callaghan and I look forward to reading more of his work.
November 30, 2019
My Coney Island Baby is my first Billy O’Callaghan novel, and this author is highly recommended by several of my Goodreads friends.
Michael and Caitlin are each married to other people, but they have met monthly in a run down hotel in Coney Island. Their love affair has continued for years and has enabled them to stay in the comfort of their unhappy marriages.
During one month’s visit, there’s a storm brewing outside, and also a storm brewing inside. Michael’s wife has cancer, and Caitlin’s husband’s job will be relocating him to the Midwest. It’s at this juncture that the two must make a decision about their future together.
Overall, I soaked in this author’s take on middle-aged, forbidden love. There’s a sensitivity to the writing that I picked up on immediately, and it connected me to these characters and the author’s depiction of them.
I normally might question two lovers in a lifelong affair, but when O’Callaghan navigates the storyline, I understood where each flawed person was coming from, the bits and pieces of life that add up to overbearing challenges, and the fallible decisions we all make that may also add up to equal challenges. There is beauty here in the forlorn, in the decay of the hotel, and in the hearts of these average human beings.
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
Michael and Caitlin are each married to other people, but they have met monthly in a run down hotel in Coney Island. Their love affair has continued for years and has enabled them to stay in the comfort of their unhappy marriages.
During one month’s visit, there’s a storm brewing outside, and also a storm brewing inside. Michael’s wife has cancer, and Caitlin’s husband’s job will be relocating him to the Midwest. It’s at this juncture that the two must make a decision about their future together.
Overall, I soaked in this author’s take on middle-aged, forbidden love. There’s a sensitivity to the writing that I picked up on immediately, and it connected me to these characters and the author’s depiction of them.
I normally might question two lovers in a lifelong affair, but when O’Callaghan navigates the storyline, I understood where each flawed person was coming from, the bits and pieces of life that add up to overbearing challenges, and the fallible decisions we all make that may also add up to equal challenges. There is beauty here in the forlorn, in the decay of the hotel, and in the hearts of these average human beings.
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
January 20, 2020
At times, My Coney Island Baby felt like the novelistic equivalent of a pointillistic painting — every emotion, thought and interaction broken down and examined carefully and separately. Michael and Caitlin have been lovers for years. They meet once a month on Coney Island. The rest of the time, they endure marriages that seem to have long passed their expiration dates. O’Callaghan paints one of their afternoons together, while flashing back to parts of their separate lives. The writing and attention to detail is absolutely beautiful. At times, the emotional pitch felt almost overwhelming or suffocating. But I really appreciate O’Callaghan’s craftsmanship and the complex emotional and moral vortex he plunged me into. I will definitely read more of his writing. A belated thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
December 2, 2024
I was introduced to the writing of Billy O'Callaghan through his collection The Boatman and Other Stories. His prose is lush, sensuous, and lyrical.
Michael and Caitlin meet at a club:
"They stood in one another's arms, dancing but barely moving, or moving like cobweb on a breath of night breeze, as tunes seeped one into the next. The skin of her temple pressed hot and damp against his cheek, and he bowed his head and told her things in murmurs that he had never shared with anyone else. Together they felt complete. It wasn't about sparks. This was fusion, nothing less."
They're both married to others, and fall hard for each other. They embark on an affair, meeting one day a month, that is sustained for over twenty years. Though the narrative spans only this one day in their affair, O'Callaghan chronicles their layered histories. He seems to slow down time as he draws exquisite portraits of his protagonists and their environments.
O'Callaghan offers up this description of love:
"There is a preciousness in being able to open up to someone, in being able to say aloud the kind of things--dreams, dreads and longings--that it never seemed possible to share or discuss with anyone else. Between most people, a kind of fear exists. Love lies in getting past that fear to the open space beyond. Once that happens, failure is no longer important."
This is the relationship that most of us seek, and few are fortunate to find. It is blissful to be able to fully open your heart and be able to trust that everything will be received with kindness, to have someone with whom to talk over the big and little facets of life.
While this book is mostly about Michael and Caitlin's relationship, their experiences mold them. We are all shaped by societal pressures around us. One striking example is how Michael and his wife Barbara were treated after the death of their infant son.
"All were careful to keep their tones demure and their expressions serious. But all, in their chosen way, pushed a pragmatic agenda. It happened, and yes, it was tragic, the very worst kind of sad, but it had not succeeded in stopping time. The world was still the world. The inference was clear; leave it as it lies and step away. Move on. . . . And what the grieving couple were supposed to do, what was expected of them, was to nod and try to smile, even though they were both bleeding fountains inside. With the world on fire around them, their duty was to brace themselves against the pain and to whisper understanding. They were to lie, to themselves and to everyone else, and to keep at it until the lies became fact."
I have seen this mindset in action. My brother and his wife's second child lived only an hour. They were heartbroken. Rather than listening and holding space for their grief, well meaning family members couldn't understand why this couple was still grieving and a year later was not yet ready to try again to expand their family. Having a strong relationship let them lean on each other and heal together despite the pressures around them. They were also fortunate to have some "sane" family and friends who supported them through their grief and encouraged them to move forward at their own pace.
Michael's years growing up in Ireland and Caitlin's growing up with a bitter, single mother influence their future life choices which ripple out through their lives. O'Callaghan uses a narrow lens to richly capture these singular details and assemble them into a full picture.
My Coney Island Baby is a nuanced look at intimacy and estrangement that will be a good fit for those who love character driven stories and exquisite prose.
Publication 2019
Michael and Caitlin meet at a club:
"They stood in one another's arms, dancing but barely moving, or moving like cobweb on a breath of night breeze, as tunes seeped one into the next. The skin of her temple pressed hot and damp against his cheek, and he bowed his head and told her things in murmurs that he had never shared with anyone else. Together they felt complete. It wasn't about sparks. This was fusion, nothing less."
They're both married to others, and fall hard for each other. They embark on an affair, meeting one day a month, that is sustained for over twenty years. Though the narrative spans only this one day in their affair, O'Callaghan chronicles their layered histories. He seems to slow down time as he draws exquisite portraits of his protagonists and their environments.
O'Callaghan offers up this description of love:
"There is a preciousness in being able to open up to someone, in being able to say aloud the kind of things--dreams, dreads and longings--that it never seemed possible to share or discuss with anyone else. Between most people, a kind of fear exists. Love lies in getting past that fear to the open space beyond. Once that happens, failure is no longer important."
This is the relationship that most of us seek, and few are fortunate to find. It is blissful to be able to fully open your heart and be able to trust that everything will be received with kindness, to have someone with whom to talk over the big and little facets of life.
While this book is mostly about Michael and Caitlin's relationship, their experiences mold them. We are all shaped by societal pressures around us. One striking example is how Michael and his wife Barbara were treated after the death of their infant son.
"All were careful to keep their tones demure and their expressions serious. But all, in their chosen way, pushed a pragmatic agenda. It happened, and yes, it was tragic, the very worst kind of sad, but it had not succeeded in stopping time. The world was still the world. The inference was clear; leave it as it lies and step away. Move on. . . . And what the grieving couple were supposed to do, what was expected of them, was to nod and try to smile, even though they were both bleeding fountains inside. With the world on fire around them, their duty was to brace themselves against the pain and to whisper understanding. They were to lie, to themselves and to everyone else, and to keep at it until the lies became fact."
I have seen this mindset in action. My brother and his wife's second child lived only an hour. They were heartbroken. Rather than listening and holding space for their grief, well meaning family members couldn't understand why this couple was still grieving and a year later was not yet ready to try again to expand their family. Having a strong relationship let them lean on each other and heal together despite the pressures around them. They were also fortunate to have some "sane" family and friends who supported them through their grief and encouraged them to move forward at their own pace.
Michael's years growing up in Ireland and Caitlin's growing up with a bitter, single mother influence their future life choices which ripple out through their lives. O'Callaghan uses a narrow lens to richly capture these singular details and assemble them into a full picture.
My Coney Island Baby is a nuanced look at intimacy and estrangement that will be a good fit for those who love character driven stories and exquisite prose.
Publication 2019
February 24, 2021
It's depressing not liking what everyone else loves!
What is wrong with me?
I simply cannot get my head around this book!
Two middle-aged lovers meet the first Tuesday of every month on Coney Island, Brooklyn. They have been doing this for twenty-five years. Michael and Caitlin are the two lovers. We share their hours together on one cold, damp and windy Tuesday in January, in a hotel room rented for one day. It is off-season. The deserted, ramshackle one-night stand has seen better days.
Neither Michael nor Caitlin have a happy marriage. Michael’s wife is battling cancer. Catlin’s husband has announced that he will be offered a promotion, a promotion that will demand that they move to Peoria, Illinois. This we are told at the start. What does the future hold for Michael and Caitlin and their relationship and love for each other?
Many state that the author’s prose is beautiful. I disagree. It rubbed ME in all the wrong ways. I find it wordy. Sentences are too long. Ideas are not clearly expressed. The lines are supposed to sound profound and deep, but often they say absolutely nothing of consequence. What is said is alternately convoluted or trite! The metaphors are bad. My distaste for the prose hit me right off the bat.
Once married, one can of course, still feel an attraction for others. Attraction is not something one can turn off and on like a spigot. It happens, and when it does, it envelopes one. A person does however not lose all control. Over a period of twenty-five years, there is sure to arise an opportunity to remedy an intolerable situation. Spontaneous physical attractions may occur, but that they fail to be uncovered and continue for a quarter of a century is unbelievable. Living with such dishonesty for such a long time is incredible, unfathomable.
I am a thinker. I analyze things to pieces. When something happens, I instinctively line up alternatives, analyze the situation and make choices. Life is all about making choices. The consequences of our choices are what we must live with. It is beyond my imagination that Michael and Caitlin behave as they do on the one Tuesday in January which we spend with them. I cannot believe they do not sit down and talk rather than hop into bed. Despite that I know others are not necessarily like me, their behavior boggles my mind.
This is a very, very, very sad story. This doesn’t bother me, but a prospective reader should be told. Yes, there is love, but love does not solve everything.
How is the story told? We are in Michael's and Caitlin’s heads. This is how we become acquainted with their pasts. As we learn of them, we get an inkling of why they behave as they do. I do not like how the telling flips around in time. Much time is spent describing how each sees the other’s body. I did not find these portions even titillating. For me the text was tame, certainly not tantalizing, just plain boring. There is a minimum of conversation between Michael and Caitlin, which for me is utterly bizarre and incomprehensible! When they do finally speak to each other, what they say is revealing and to the point. Finally, a plus for the book.
Plus number two--the ending is good. The story could not possibly end in any other way, considering who these characters are. That it is open-ended I appreciate too.
Courtney Patterson does a very good job reading the book. She modulates her voice appropriately. It is certainly possible to very much like a narration and still not fall for the book. Four stars for the audio narration.
I will not be reading more by this author. The verbosity of the prose annoyed me. Michael and Cailin’s behavior is incomprehensible. How can it be possible for their relationship to go on so long?! It seems I am one of the few with such views.
************************
*My Coney Island Baby 2 stars
*Life Sentences maybe
What is wrong with me?
I simply cannot get my head around this book!
Two middle-aged lovers meet the first Tuesday of every month on Coney Island, Brooklyn. They have been doing this for twenty-five years. Michael and Caitlin are the two lovers. We share their hours together on one cold, damp and windy Tuesday in January, in a hotel room rented for one day. It is off-season. The deserted, ramshackle one-night stand has seen better days.
Neither Michael nor Caitlin have a happy marriage. Michael’s wife is battling cancer. Catlin’s husband has announced that he will be offered a promotion, a promotion that will demand that they move to Peoria, Illinois. This we are told at the start. What does the future hold for Michael and Caitlin and their relationship and love for each other?
Many state that the author’s prose is beautiful. I disagree. It rubbed ME in all the wrong ways. I find it wordy. Sentences are too long. Ideas are not clearly expressed. The lines are supposed to sound profound and deep, but often they say absolutely nothing of consequence. What is said is alternately convoluted or trite! The metaphors are bad. My distaste for the prose hit me right off the bat.
Once married, one can of course, still feel an attraction for others. Attraction is not something one can turn off and on like a spigot. It happens, and when it does, it envelopes one. A person does however not lose all control. Over a period of twenty-five years, there is sure to arise an opportunity to remedy an intolerable situation. Spontaneous physical attractions may occur, but that they fail to be uncovered and continue for a quarter of a century is unbelievable. Living with such dishonesty for such a long time is incredible, unfathomable.
I am a thinker. I analyze things to pieces. When something happens, I instinctively line up alternatives, analyze the situation and make choices. Life is all about making choices. The consequences of our choices are what we must live with. It is beyond my imagination that Michael and Caitlin behave as they do on the one Tuesday in January which we spend with them. I cannot believe they do not sit down and talk rather than hop into bed. Despite that I know others are not necessarily like me, their behavior boggles my mind.
This is a very, very, very sad story. This doesn’t bother me, but a prospective reader should be told. Yes, there is love, but love does not solve everything.
How is the story told? We are in Michael's and Caitlin’s heads. This is how we become acquainted with their pasts. As we learn of them, we get an inkling of why they behave as they do. I do not like how the telling flips around in time. Much time is spent describing how each sees the other’s body. I did not find these portions even titillating. For me the text was tame, certainly not tantalizing, just plain boring. There is a minimum of conversation between Michael and Caitlin, which for me is utterly bizarre and incomprehensible! When they do finally speak to each other, what they say is revealing and to the point. Finally, a plus for the book.
Plus number two--the ending is good. The story could not possibly end in any other way, considering who these characters are. That it is open-ended I appreciate too.
Courtney Patterson does a very good job reading the book. She modulates her voice appropriately. It is certainly possible to very much like a narration and still not fall for the book. Four stars for the audio narration.
I will not be reading more by this author. The verbosity of the prose annoyed me. Michael and Cailin’s behavior is incomprehensible. How can it be possible for their relationship to go on so long?! It seems I am one of the few with such views.
************************
*My Coney Island Baby 2 stars
*Life Sentences maybe
May 4, 2019
This is a beautifully written book about a couple who, to escape their unhappy marriages, have been meeting once a month for twenty-five years on Coney Island.
The substance was however not really for me. Michael divulges that his wife Barb has cancer and with exquisitely written and yet sensitive flashbacks we are kept informed of the progress of her disease and how it affects the lives of the pair of them.
Caitlin also has her ghosts with her husband and his rather discreet affairs. Nevertheless, I loved this personality.
I just feel that this is such an excellent writer, with obviously joy in his soul purely by his writing style, that he needs to reach out in another direction. Where, I don't know but I have no doubt he will find it.
When one has a writing talent such as Mr O'Callaghan, he will soon appear with the right "positive" book.
Bravo!
The substance was however not really for me. Michael divulges that his wife Barb has cancer and with exquisitely written and yet sensitive flashbacks we are kept informed of the progress of her disease and how it affects the lives of the pair of them.
Caitlin also has her ghosts with her husband and his rather discreet affairs. Nevertheless, I loved this personality.
I just feel that this is such an excellent writer, with obviously joy in his soul purely by his writing style, that he needs to reach out in another direction. Where, I don't know but I have no doubt he will find it.
When one has a writing talent such as Mr O'Callaghan, he will soon appear with the right "positive" book.
Bravo!
Read
April 12, 2021Normally I would never reach for a book with a title that smells that much of chicklit. But apparently, I can be influenced by my literary friends, who highly recommended this novel in their reviews. Also, the setting of the story, the past glory of Coney Island, New York, seemed a plus. Unfortunately, it was a bad trip. It was the style of O'Callaghan in particular that made me bite the dust: the far-fetched metaphors, the excessive atmospheric elements, sometimes the senseless muddle of words, it eventually became a bit too much for me. Also the story itself, a long adultery relationship that comes to an end, felt like a too stylized romance. Only in the second chapter, about the untimely death of protagonist Mathew's baby son, I found O'Callaghan managed to strike the right note. But after yet another description of Mathew's decaying middle aged-body (no, I don't take that personally), and yet another ode to the beauty of his wife and of his mistress, I had enough of these clichés. I confess that I closed the book with relief after 100 pages, so I am not going to give it a rating. Sorry to the fans.
abandoned-on-hold
March 8, 2019Well that was the quickest abandonment in history (pg 4)
She finds his tongue and rolls it gently with the tip of her own, forces its pulp against the rim of her upper front teeth. He goes willingly. Her mouth has the heat of tea
Nope, sorry bookclub I can't do it.
She finds his tongue and rolls it gently with the tip of her own, forces its pulp against the rim of her upper front teeth. He goes willingly. Her mouth has the heat of tea
Nope, sorry bookclub I can't do it.
June 12, 2020
For 20+ years, Coney Island has been the secret rendezvous for Michael and Caitlin. Each is in an unhappy marriage and once a month the pair escape for a few short hours to make love and consider their lives and choices.
Michael's wife has recently received a grim diagnosis and Caitlin could soon be relocated out of state if her husband receives a promotion. On a bitter winter day, the couple discusses things that have been avoided for decades and the possibilities in their future.
My Coney Island Baby is intense in a very quiet and subtle way. Over the span of a few short hours we learn the histories of Michael and Caitlin, the tragedies that have defined their lives and brought them together, and what has kept them apart but devoted to their enduring affair.
I love a book that delivers both the past and present in a way readers can understand the actions of the characters over the course of time. There were endless layers to peel back and examine the sorrows and desires of these two people and it was absolutely fascinating.
A solid story of two people's lives and the decisions they've made, My Coney Island Baby is a book I recommend to readers who love literary fiction and character studies.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
Michael's wife has recently received a grim diagnosis and Caitlin could soon be relocated out of state if her husband receives a promotion. On a bitter winter day, the couple discusses things that have been avoided for decades and the possibilities in their future.
My Coney Island Baby is intense in a very quiet and subtle way. Over the span of a few short hours we learn the histories of Michael and Caitlin, the tragedies that have defined their lives and brought them together, and what has kept them apart but devoted to their enduring affair.
I love a book that delivers both the past and present in a way readers can understand the actions of the characters over the course of time. There were endless layers to peel back and examine the sorrows and desires of these two people and it was absolutely fascinating.
A solid story of two people's lives and the decisions they've made, My Coney Island Baby is a book I recommend to readers who love literary fiction and character studies.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
April 22, 2024
The general theme of the book—adultery—is not something that sits well with me. Regardless, the writing of the book, IMO, was “exquisite”. I doubt other O'Callaghan readers would disagree when I say that he has an absolutely gorgeous way with words.🤗 The writing in My Coney Island Baby was so incredibly beautiful! More than once, the beauty of his words took my breath away. I could only place my hand against my heart and hold my breath as I read.
One sentence, in particular, fairly jumped off the page at me. In my mind it was, sadly, the summation of their long love affair, and was spoken on what would be their final day together. After more than 25 years, they were still very much in love, but they were married to other people. The time was fast approaching when, inevitably, they would have to part. And as she gazed out at the wintry Coney Island sky, she said:
5 “The-Heart-Wants-what-the-Heart-Wants” stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
One sentence, in particular, fairly jumped off the page at me. In my mind it was, sadly, the summation of their long love affair, and was spoken on what would be their final day together. After more than 25 years, they were still very much in love, but they were married to other people. The time was fast approaching when, inevitably, they would have to part. And as she gazed out at the wintry Coney Island sky, she said:
“Love… is the story we make up to justify all the rotten things we do.”I highly recommend this book, as Angela recommended it to me. Her beautiful review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5 “The-Heart-Wants-what-the-Heart-Wants” stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
January 16, 2021
Seria més aviat un 3'5, però m'ha agradat.
Goodreads, deixa'ns votar amb mig punt d'una santa vegada, va home va
Goodreads, deixa'ns votar amb mig punt d'una santa vegada, va home va
July 15, 2019
My grandmother lived near Coney Island and when I was a child, I was always a bit in awe of its magic and enchantment, always undercut by a prevailing sense of menace an a hint of unreality.
In Billy O’Callaghan’s novel, his merging of marvel with a seedy underbelly is on display in this tale of illicit love. Michael and Caitlin, two lovers in their late 40s, escape their tedious marriages to revel in each other on a monthly basis. Michael, a fastidious salesman, experienced tragedy early in his marriage; Caitlin, a writer, subsists with a seemingly good husband who may have had his dalliances. These regular trysts are what keeps them going.
The author is a master wordsmith and in dissecting the several hours that Michael and Caitlin share on a cold January afternoon, we get a clear sense of their interactions—their aging bodies, their “survival fueled on denial and made bearable by meeting once a month to pleasure in lighting one another’s fuses, that four week integer tried and tested to perfection in their game of lust gap enough to hone the appetite to aching, to hold excitement at a dizzying height.”
The descriptions of the repeated physical connections—at first luminous—begin to feel repetitive and I suspect deliberately so. The acceptance of the aging process (Michael now carries an excess of weight and his stomach pummels her during lovemaking) is objectively displayed. These are two people who know each other’s imperfections and provide a safe haven. But like any affair, theirs is now at a crossroads, due to external factors on each of their sides. A question looms through this book: what do they have a right to choose?
As decisions loom, time is slowed down and each detail becomes intensely described, which is one of the beauties of Billy O’Callaghan’s writing. Although the author refuses to judge his characters, the reader may see differently. “Love…is the story we make up to justify all the rotten things we do,” Caitlin says. Is that, indeed, the definition of love? Or is it the inertia and lack of courage that keeps them tied to dying marriages? There is, of course, no clear answer.
In Billy O’Callaghan’s novel, his merging of marvel with a seedy underbelly is on display in this tale of illicit love. Michael and Caitlin, two lovers in their late 40s, escape their tedious marriages to revel in each other on a monthly basis. Michael, a fastidious salesman, experienced tragedy early in his marriage; Caitlin, a writer, subsists with a seemingly good husband who may have had his dalliances. These regular trysts are what keeps them going.
The author is a master wordsmith and in dissecting the several hours that Michael and Caitlin share on a cold January afternoon, we get a clear sense of their interactions—their aging bodies, their “survival fueled on denial and made bearable by meeting once a month to pleasure in lighting one another’s fuses, that four week integer tried and tested to perfection in their game of lust gap enough to hone the appetite to aching, to hold excitement at a dizzying height.”
The descriptions of the repeated physical connections—at first luminous—begin to feel repetitive and I suspect deliberately so. The acceptance of the aging process (Michael now carries an excess of weight and his stomach pummels her during lovemaking) is objectively displayed. These are two people who know each other’s imperfections and provide a safe haven. But like any affair, theirs is now at a crossroads, due to external factors on each of their sides. A question looms through this book: what do they have a right to choose?
As decisions loom, time is slowed down and each detail becomes intensely described, which is one of the beauties of Billy O’Callaghan’s writing. Although the author refuses to judge his characters, the reader may see differently. “Love…is the story we make up to justify all the rotten things we do,” Caitlin says. Is that, indeed, the definition of love? Or is it the inertia and lack of courage that keeps them tied to dying marriages? There is, of course, no clear answer.
August 8, 2023
El parque de atracciones de Coney Island es el lugar de esparcimiento tradicional para los habitantes de Nueva York, sobre todo en verano, sobre todo en tiempos pasados. En la novela es un espacio decadente y devastado por el tiempo invernal que sirve de fondo a un encuentro entre amantes, que puede ser el último, porque su pasión ha durado demasiado y el otoño se está apoderando de sus cuerpos. Toda una metáfora, muy bella y que funciona muy bien y nos regala párrafos y descripciones llenas de simbolismo y poesía:
Más allá de la ventana, el cielo se aferra a los últimos resquicios de esta buena luz vespertina que anuncia el crepúsculo, y cada estrato del pasado parece estar ahí mismo, al alacance de la mano, su antigua vida y también esta, en sus incontables repeticiones, convertida hoy en una reunión de mil fantasmas.
Creo que tiene mucha calidad literaria, pero aunque he disfrutado la lectura, a mí no me ha acabado de convencer por dos razones:
1.- Los personajes no me han entusiasmado, me han resultado un poco ajenos y, aunque entiendo el dramatismo de la situación en que se encuentran, no he acabado de entender sus motivaciones y razonamientos.
2.- Las descripciones, que son su fuerte, son también un punto débil, llegando a resultar morosas cuando diseccionan cada gesto, cada movimiento, hasta un extremo de detalle que cansa y no aporta gran cosa:
Su mano seguía en la de Michael, leve, frágil y notablemente fría, pero su postura no cambió. Con los dedos de la mano libre exploró la cara interna de la muñeca de Michael, que se fijó en sus uñas, cortas pero no demasiado, pintadas para él del intenso terracota de las tejas y la sangre fresca, tal vez el único toque de color en toda la habitación.
Tampoco me han gustado reflexiones un tanto manidas del tipo:
El amor era real, pero también una flor delicada que exigía cuidados constantes. Florecía de forma efímera y espectacular, pero se marchitaba a las primeras de cambio.
En resumen, una novela bien escrita pero que no me ha acabado de gustar y a trozos se me ha hecho pesada.
Más allá de la ventana, el cielo se aferra a los últimos resquicios de esta buena luz vespertina que anuncia el crepúsculo, y cada estrato del pasado parece estar ahí mismo, al alacance de la mano, su antigua vida y también esta, en sus incontables repeticiones, convertida hoy en una reunión de mil fantasmas.
Creo que tiene mucha calidad literaria, pero aunque he disfrutado la lectura, a mí no me ha acabado de convencer por dos razones:
1.- Los personajes no me han entusiasmado, me han resultado un poco ajenos y, aunque entiendo el dramatismo de la situación en que se encuentran, no he acabado de entender sus motivaciones y razonamientos.
2.- Las descripciones, que son su fuerte, son también un punto débil, llegando a resultar morosas cuando diseccionan cada gesto, cada movimiento, hasta un extremo de detalle que cansa y no aporta gran cosa:
Su mano seguía en la de Michael, leve, frágil y notablemente fría, pero su postura no cambió. Con los dedos de la mano libre exploró la cara interna de la muñeca de Michael, que se fijó en sus uñas, cortas pero no demasiado, pintadas para él del intenso terracota de las tejas y la sangre fresca, tal vez el único toque de color en toda la habitación.
Tampoco me han gustado reflexiones un tanto manidas del tipo:
El amor era real, pero también una flor delicada que exigía cuidados constantes. Florecía de forma efímera y espectacular, pero se marchitaba a las primeras de cambio.
En resumen, una novela bien escrita pero que no me ha acabado de gustar y a trozos se me ha hecho pesada.
December 30, 2018
This novel is astounding. Not much happens - two middle-aged lovers (heterosexual, white) spend one winter day together in Coney Island, where they have met monthly for 25 years. The exquisitely detailed story of the day is broken up with background about his childhood in Ireland and both of their continued marriages.
There are two pages (80 & 81) that I liked so much I copied them and show them to people. Caitlin's frank observations of Michael's aging body and her love for him touch me deeply. One sentence follows. "It is there, twisted into the details of his features, in the shadowy furrows beneath his eyes, in the shifting pinch of his narrow mouth, and it reveals him in full, a childlike innocent needing her as no one ever has, a man still strong to an inch beneath the skin but weak with insecurity that she will one day see him for what he has become, and reject him."
The author digs deeply and beautifully into the characters' feelings, connections, insecurities, and thoughts. Readers are pulled into their lives.
I received an Advance Readers Copy of My Coney Island Baby, which will be published in January 2019.
There are two pages (80 & 81) that I liked so much I copied them and show them to people. Caitlin's frank observations of Michael's aging body and her love for him touch me deeply. One sentence follows. "It is there, twisted into the details of his features, in the shadowy furrows beneath his eyes, in the shifting pinch of his narrow mouth, and it reveals him in full, a childlike innocent needing her as no one ever has, a man still strong to an inch beneath the skin but weak with insecurity that she will one day see him for what he has become, and reject him."
The author digs deeply and beautifully into the characters' feelings, connections, insecurities, and thoughts. Readers are pulled into their lives.
I received an Advance Readers Copy of My Coney Island Baby, which will be published in January 2019.
September 28, 2020
Read this heartbreaking book if you want to read breathtaking language. Billy O'Callaghan is one of Ireland's best short-story, and now novel, writers. He is unsurpassed in his ability to form a sentence so beautiful that you are forced to re-read his words again and again, appreciating his mastery like a work of art hanging on a gallery wall. If you are a writer, this is a must read.
October 12, 2019
Read this because of a great review from somewhere. I found it turgid, verbose, redundant, disjointed rumination filled with lines I could not decipher: "Love had, for the first time, revealed its shades of intent." And "...the sentiment, without translation, hung almost shapeless between them, flushed by air of its edges, and so much the better for that." And, "Nights for her are always the worst, lying there while Thomas slumbers, but intentionally adrift to the outermost margins of her side of the bed, not just to get away but to bask in feeling condemned, and staring, in a kind of mute rage at first but with the slog of hours in an increasingly lumpen and hypnotic stupor, at the familiar shapes of the room furniture reduced looming silhouette and at the dead-black, inch-wide crack of the wardrobe door hanging ajar and hinting at a special kind of netherworldly doom beyond." I guess we've all had nights like that, but I had to chew my way through sentence after sentence like these that either made no sense or were overwrought, not to mention the constant details that writer's observe and describe but never seem to add any substance or meaning to the story. It was as if he was saying: I need to add another ten pages to the book - let's describe the overweight lady on the train and speculate how she got that lovely, delicate ring on her fat finger. He also seems to have a thing for ladies underwear. I didn't learn anything from this book except the two adulterers didn't have the ability to leave their loveless marriages, exulting in their love affair while their respective spouses languished in isolation, shoring up a false facade. He makes a few good points on aging, but once again, my obsession to get to the end of a book I don't like because I have to figure out how it got published has tortured me.
March 25, 2020
K dobrému románu potřebuji nosný příběh a vycizelovaný text. Ideálně propojení obého. Někdy je námět nosný, ale literární zdatnost autora kvalitu knížky snižuje. Hezké je, že něco podobného jsem psala u svého předchozího hodnocení. Náš Coney Island je skoro pravý opak, příběh je v podstatě jednoduchý, pro mnohé nemá takovou sílu, ale naopak je jazykově přímo vysochaný a kochat se pečlivě vystavěnými větami autorovými mě nesmírně těšilo. Četla jsem ho vlastně enormně pomalu, probírala jsem se větami pečlivě a dlouho asi podobně, jako je dlouho a přepečlivě autor sám psal. A vlastně mě to bavilo. I když je příběh Michaela a Caitlin tak obyčejný a tak podobný tisícům jiných. Byla to jedna z těch knih, které se mi chtělo číst nahlas, aby vyzněla melodičnost a jiskřivost jazyka. Příště trošku přitlačit na obsah a bude to třeba za plný počet. 70 %
May 21, 2020
Billy O'Callaghan has become one of my favorite writers based on the two books of his I've read. As with the short fiction, his novel delves inside his characters, and the present is informed by the past. Although based in Ireland, he has captured the atmosphere of a New York city in midwinter, and given all his characters inner lives that will haunt.
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