My Coney Island Baby
A Novel
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3.7 • 14 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“An illicit meeting between long-term lovers makes for a poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time…In the closing pages, O’Callaghan’s prose reaches a pitch of emotional intensity that ensures these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed.” — The Guardian
Radiant with beauty, longing, and desire, and deeply touching, this riveting novel, reminiscent of the works of William Trevor and Colm Tóibín, evokes the long love affair between a man and a woman, each married to another, who meet every month in a decaying hotel in Coney Island, Brooklyn.
On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin, two middle-aged lovers, escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit date. Once a month for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven, the place in which they have abandoned themselves to their love.
These beautiful, carefully-rationed days have long sustained Michael and Caitlin’s love, and have helped help them survive the tedium of their lives separate from each other. But now, amid the howling winds whipping off the Atlantic, and a snow storm blackening the horizon, this nearly abandoned resort feels like the edge of the world. On this winter day, burrowed in their private cocoon, they will discover that their lives are on the brink of change.
Michael’s wife is battling cancer, and Caitlin’s husband is about to receive a major promotion, which will involve relocating to the Midwest. After half a lifetime together in their most intimate moments, certain long-denied facts must be faced, decisions made, consequences weighed and, maybe, just maybe, chances finally taken.
A quiet, intense depiction of love and intimacy, My Coney Island Baby reveals, within the course of a single day’s passing, the histories, landscapes, tragedies and occasional moments of wonder that constitute the lives of two people who, although living worlds apart, have been inexorably drawn together. But even in this most private of retreats, a place seemingly built for romance, the most heartbreaking of realities loom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O'Callaghan's stiff second novel (after The Dead House) maneuvers through the emotional and physical landscape of an afternoon tryst in a seedy Coney Island hotel room. Unlike within their confined, unfulfilling marriages, middle-aged lovers Michael and Caitlin are able to shed their inhibitions during monthly rendezvous in Coney Island. During one of these outings, they muse on their pasts, regrets, and fond memories. But as the day passes, both begin to wonder whether they will ever be fully together, as they've long planned; Michael's wife is fighting kidney cancer and Caitlin's husband's career may require them to move away from New York. While the boardwalk setting "at the end of the world" before a large storm hits New York is vividly rendered, heightening the tension of what may be a final meeting, the thinness of the plot is frustrating, with Michael and Caitlin's conversations coming across as rather maudlin. And while the story hinges on the assumed passion of their relationship, the two lovers are awkward and taciturn, and much of the dialogue is delivered in one-sided, long-winded monologues. O'Callaghan excels at painting a bleak portrait of physical and emotional isolation; unfortunately, the unsatisfying character development and weak plot fail to live up to the intriguing setup.
