Mary and O'Neil [Hardcover]

Justin Cronin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2001

A luminous work of fiction that celebrates the uncommon in common lives, and the redemptive power of love.

Mary and O'Neil frequently marveled at how, of all the lives they might have led, they had somehow found this one together. When they met at the Philadelphia high school where they'd come to teach, each had suffered a profound loss that had not healed. How likely was it that they could learn to trust, much less love, again?

In Justin Cronin's tender, heartwise debut, eight stories trace the lives of these two vulnerable young people as they rediscover in each other a world alive with promise and hope.

From the formative experiences of their early adulthood to marriage, parenthood, and beyond, each chapter illuminates the moments of grace that enable Mary and O'Neil to make peace with the deep emotional legacies that haunt them: the sudden, mysterious death of O'Neil's parents, Mary's long-ago decision to end a pregnancy, O'Neil's sister's battle with illness and a troubled marriage.

Like the work of Alice Hoffman, Cronin's fiction resonates with magical nuance and unexpected encounters -- a beautiful young girl who appears to Mary one night, draped in a cloud of stars; an autistic child who reveals a life-changing secret; a woman O'Neil mistakenly dials the night their first child is born -- that edify this young couple's intimate bond and affirm their faith in the future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The title of Cronin's debut collection of eight interconnected stories, set between 1979 and the present, implies that the content will be devoted to the relationship between the eponymous duo. Instead, they don't appear in the same tale until halfway through, detailing their marriage in their early 30s after both become teachers. Before this, there's a lengthy opening story concerning the events leading up to the accidental death of O'Neil's parents, Arthur and Miriam; another story on how O'Neil and his older sister, Kay, cope with the aftermath; and a third about the abortion Mary has at the age of 22. After the wedding, the stories still don't always focus on the pair, with one devoted solely to Kay's own dysfunctional marriage. Cronin, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is an accomplished craftsman, and at times his prose is quite moving and beautiful, though the sadness he channels is too often uninflected by humor. Playing out variations on the theme of the inability of parents and children to truly know one another, Cronin is capable of creating fresh poignancy. Readers interested in going straight to the best of the collection should head for "Orphans" and "A Gathering of Shades," in which the author affectingly paints how the two siblings help each other through the pain of living and dying, showcasing the real love story here. Agent, Ellen Levine. (Feb. 13) Forecast: This is a promising debut collection, and national print advertising in the New Yorker and alternative weeklies should target the appropriate readership. Sponsorship announcements will also feature the title on NPR.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

It is 1979, and 19-year-old O'Neil Burke has it all. He's in love, successful in college, and warmed by the affection of his parents and older sister Kay. After a weekend visiting their son, the Burkes, protecting each other from dark, unshared secrets, drive off an icy embankment and die. O'Neil's mounting losses include his girl, his career ambitions, and any sense of direction. Eventually, he finds his way back into a pleasant life, teaching high school English in Philadelphia and marrying Mary. More sorrow solidifies the bond between O'Neil and his sister when she fights a losing battle with cancer in her late thirties. Cronin's key mistake in this fine series of linked short stories about a family weathering crushing blows is indicated by his misleading title. Mary, who makes her first appearance nearly 100 pages into the book, is not nearly the presence that O'Neil, his parents, and his sister are. This is too bad, as the scenes between Mary and O'Neil are rich with affectionate humor, leaving the reader wanting more. Nevertheless, this is a worthy first effort by a novelist worth watching.
-DBeth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: The Dial Press; First Edition edition (February 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385333587
• ISBN-13: 978-0385333580
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #994,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in New England, Justin Cronin is the author of Mary and O'Neil, which won the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize, and The Summer Guest. Having earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Cronin is now a professor of English at Rice University and lives with his family in Houston, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent debut--the best I've read in years, February 15, 2001

By 

JOE ENGLISH (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mary and O'Neil (Hardcover)

This is the Cronin's debut, but it feels like a classic from the first page. Readers meet the title couple, Mary and O'Neil, in a series of stories which chronicle episodes from their lives, and can be read as a novel or as a collection of short pieces. The real satisfaction is Cronin's exquisite prose: his stories find their power in the subtle revelations of the characters' emotional lives. There are passages on almost every page that had me in awe of this man's talent, and I was most pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming sense of discovery I felt with this book--remember the first time you found an author who immediately became a favorite, whose writing you savored, and whom you couldn't wait to share with all your friends? As I read Mary and O'Neil, I was reminded of the feeling I had when I first found the works of J.D. Salinger, and later, Anne Tyler and John Updike...think back to discovering your own favorites and that excitement that you felt as you turned every page, knowing that you'd found something important, not just to you, but in the larger scheme of things. If Mary and O'Neil is any indication, Justin Cronin is destined for greatness. This first collection/novel is among the most promising debuts I've seen in years.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best I've read this year (so far), March 19, 2001

By 

Steph (philly) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mary and O'Neil (Hardcover)

Ordinarily, I hate books of the "Novel in Stories" variety. I usually find them to be a confused jumble of pieces without any elastic to hold them together. I admit that I had low expectations of this work when I started it due to this prejudice. What a pleasant surprise!

Other reviewers have mentioned the beauty of the prose, so I will skip a description of it. Suffice to say that it is not only beautiful, but clever. If you happen to be a writer, you will find yourself WISHING that you could condense the essence of being into phrases like Cronin's. The weaving of the stories is extraordinary: how many times have you read about a character and wondered what his/her parents were like, or what his wife was like before she entered the plot at their first meeting? Here you get that depth of information, not only through the strength of the writing but also through the structure and selection of the moments Cronin chooses to reveal. I'm not sure when the last time a book moved me to tears was, but this was one that did.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful, Emotionally Satisfying Work, April 22, 2001

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mary and O'Neil (Hardcover)

Mary and O'Neil was certainly a surprise for me. I thought it would be a nice collection of connected short stories, but it is so much more than that. The stories work more like a novel than a collection and Cronin has done marvelous things with these stories. They follow two people, O'Neil, who is nineteen when we first meet him, and Mary, the woman he eventually marries. Each story us about an emotionally pivotal experience that has ramifications for the rest of their lives, ramifications which surface in each of the following stories. The stories are wonderfully written and affecting. Each story could have been the springboard for a fully developed novel. Cronin fits so much in these stories in a terrifically effortless and smooth manner. I highly recommend this one.