An exquisite, heart-breaking novel about the end of an affair by an new Irish voice
Billy O'Callaghan is the author of the critically acclaimed novel My Coney Island Baby, which has been translated into nine languages and was shortlisted for the Encore Award 2020. Stories in his collection The Boatman and Other Stories were shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award and for Writing.ie Short Story of the Year in the An Post Irish Book Awards. He lives in Douglas, a village on the edge of Cork City.
Novel of the year is My Coney Island Baby, by Billy O’Callaghan, 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.
*Irish Times *Books of the Year**
Billy O’Callaghan’s new novel grips from the opening page. The
stride of his sentences is long and powerful, his vision raw. A
spectrum of intensities from grief to love is revealed as
relationships unfold with an honesty that is utterly
believable.
*Bernard MacLaverty*
O’Callaghan [has made a] significant achievement in this fine
novel… Good books remind us of other good books and in its
treatment of adultery this one calls to mind thematic ancestors
such as Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina and The Scarlet Letter.
*Sunday Times*
A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of
time… these characters will linger with you long after the book is
closed.
*Guardian*
Quiet, subtle and deeply moving… This is a fine novel, with
elegance and wisdom lying beneath an unpretentious surface and
O’Callaghan, a gifted writer, has managed to do that most difficult
of things: take a quiet, almost everyday story and transform it
into a thing of beauty.
*Irish Times*
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