Mary and O'Neil

I love Cronin's literary fiction, having read The Summer Guest a number of years ago. I expected this book to be a similar experience and it was in some ways, but different in others.

The title characters are a man and woman, a married couple. You'd think a book named Mary and O'Neil would be the story of a marriage, and I guess it is, sort of. But the title really should be O'Neil and Kay, because the central relationship is between O'Neil and his sister, and particularly his reliance on Kay to process the grief he feels after their parents are killed. And even that doesn't become clear for some time. Mary doesn't appear until Chapter 3, and she doesn't meet and marry O'Neil until Chapter 8 (in a book of 11 chapters).

None of that is show more meant to be criticism of the book itself. Once I adjusted my expectations of what it was about, I enjoyed the meandering journey through the lives of Mary, O'Neil and Kay. And the writing is simply gorgeous, as when O'Neil's mother talks to her son at Kay's wedding:

She looked at him, pleasure filling her like water pouring into a vase: her grown son just back from his first two weeks at college, all smooth white teeth and rangy limbs, his eyes glowing with champagne. How had it happened? Why did she miss him so, when he was standing right there?

Or this succinct description of a pregnant women:

Mary is enormous; she is a cathedral, a human aria, a C note held for ten minutes. She feels luminous, beyond gravity; she is gravity itself.

And just one more, the moment when O'Neil learns about his parents' fate:

When he opened the door to his room and saw the college chaplain there, and his roommate, Stephen, and then noticed behind them his track coach, talking in a low voice to the dormitory's resident advisor, and their eyes, a luminous chorus of compassion, rose all at once to meet his own where he stood in the doorway with his keys in his hand, he knew something awful had happened, and also what it was; before anyone could speak, a hole appeared in O'Neil's heart where his parents had once been. show less

SPOILER ALERT:

Justin's Cronin's first novel is broken up into a collection of eight short stories about the love between parents, siblings, children and lovers.

The book doesn't begin with the title characters, but rather with O'Neil's parents, Arthur and Miriam. The entirety of the book is balanced on the early revelation of the sweet complexity of their love in life and death. Their death in the first story sets the tone for the rest of the stories, providing their children with both answers and more questions about love and loss.

Mary and O'Neil's love affair is one brought about by just these questions. Mary lives with the ghost of a child she aborted early on in the book, while O'Neil's parents live in his memory with such vitality show more that he actually tries to call them after the birth of his first child—only to unexpectedly have a sad and beautiful conversation with a lonely stranger. Cronin creates Mary and O'Neil as the answers to each other's questions. Even the names that Cronin picks for them overflow with a sense of completeness: "Mary" and "O'Neil," sound more like a first name and surname than two separate characters.

The surname as name only makes more sense when one considers O'Neil's presence in the book as father figure. It is O'Neil who develops as a source of strength for several characters in the book, anointing him the ultimate patriarch of this novel. Cronin is poetic and beautifully subtle when he baptizes O'Neil's relationship with the woman who completes him and gives him a first name. The baptism is complete when Mary is ready to walk down the aisle and it begins to rain. O'Neil looks at her and all the guests at their wedding and, Cronin writes, "in his heart he marries each one of them."

Cronin's style is delicate and full of purpose, just like all of the relationships between his characters. It is hard not to relate to this book in some way if you've ever loved someone, harder still to not find Cronin's prose captivating in its wisdom and sincerity. show less

Linked stories, mostly about the oddly-named O'Neil Burke and his family, and the woman he marries, Mary. Despite the title, the relationship between the title characters is not fleshed out very well. We don't see them meet, nor spend much time together. But there are two sections about their getting pregnant, and going into labor. Most of the time, there's an emotional distancing between the narrator and the story, I felt. The relationship between O'Neil and his parents was handled very well, and was the strongest part of the book, for me. Cronin has an impressive understanding of what it's like to be a parent facing the empty nest stage (which I am just beginning to experience). There is emotional truth here without sentimentality. I show more hope he comes back to writing serious fiction once he's made a bunch of money selling Stephen King knock-offs. He's a great writer. (Cronin, not King.) show less

This is a novel in 8 well-crafted short stories that tells the story of 2 generations of 2 extended families centring on the title couple.

I read "Mary and O'Neil" after being impressed with writer Cronin's vision and command of story in the 2000+ page Passage Trilogy https://www.librarything.com/series/The+Passage.

He has exactly the same command in this much smaller scaled 250 page novel which leaps in time between stories and yet tells all you need to know about Mary, O'Neil and their family through 8 major life events.

The oddly-named O'Neil is the the center of these inter-linked stories. Justin Cronin describes the challenges and joys of this normal life as he advances from adolescence to maturity. The narrative of O'Neil's life is told beautifully by a very talented writer. Life's inevitable tragedies, regrets, joys and life-changing moments are told with a remarkable conveyance of understanding and empathy.

Somewhere between linked stories and a novel, it's an exploration of a family dealing with the curves life throws at them. Pretty well written but seemed to rely on dreams and extreme physical crises overly much.

Justin Cronin has an exquisite command of language, nuance and ability to evoke emotional involvement.