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Book Cover for: Mary and O'Neil: A Novel in Stories, Justin Cronin

Mary and O'Neil: A Novel in Stories

Justin Cronin

WINNER OF THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD - "An astonishingly good first novel . . . fully engaging from the first paragraph. What a gift: to be able to live alongside these people for a while."--Ann Patchett, Chicago Tribune

Mary and O'Neil: They are like any other couple. They have survived loss and found love and managed the occasional hard-earned laugh as they move toward the future, hearts thick with hope. Each human life is ever changing, born of moments large and small--births and deaths and weddings, grave mistakes and chance encounters and acts of surprising courage--and in this unforgettable book, Justin Cronin makes vivid how those moments connect us all, making us more than we could ever be on our own.

Alight with nuance, sly humor, and startling wisdom, Mary and O'Neil celebrates the uncommon grace to be found in common lives

Praise for Mary and O'Neil

"Admirably fearless."--The New York Times Book Review

"The kind of storytelling that goes down easy, and sticks to your ribs."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Cronin succeeds, touchingly and tenderly, in portraying life itself as a triumph of hope over experience."--The Boston Globe

Book Details

  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publish Date: Jan 29th, 2002
  • Pages: 256
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.40in - 0.70in - 0.60lb
  • EAN: 9780385333597
  • Categories: Short Stories (single author)LiteraryComing of Age

About the Author

Justin Cronin is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and associate professor of English at La Salle University. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Epoch, Greensboro Review, and Crescent Review, and in The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. He lives with his wife and their young daughter in Philadelphia.

Praise for this book

"An astonishingly good first novel . . . fully engaging from the first paragraph. What a gift: to be able to live alongside these people for a while."--Ann Patchett, Chicago Tribune

"A literary love story . . . about the fragility of good fortune and the accidental ways of finding happiness."--USA Today

"Justin Cronin must have been a novelist in an earlier life. What else could account for the mature insight and the beautifully controlled technique we find in his debut novel? . . . Cronin succeeds, touchingly and tenderly, in portraying life itself as a triumph of hope over experience."--The Boston Globe

"Justin Cronin's Mary and O'Neil is that rare thing: a wholly engrossing story of the ordinary life."--Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls' Rising