My Coney Island Baby

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. – John Banville * 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. – Bert Wright * 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. – Claire Kilroy * 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. – John Boyne * Irish Times *
[My Coney Island Baby] is the story of two ordinary people trapped in their ordinary lives. But in the hands of O’Callaghan it is magnified to the truly extraordinary. A great tragedy. I long thought Anita Brookner the high priestess when it comes to telling the tales of loneliness and defeat. But she’s now got company. * Sunday Independent *
My Coney Island Baby is that rare thing: a love story that manages to be romantic and realistic… Billy O’Callaghan describes their love with a truthfulness that is often heart-rending… [his writing] demands to be taken slowly and savoured. – Kate Saunders * The Times *
One of the finest Irish fictions of last year. – Donal O’Donoghue * RTE Guide *
Billy O’Callaghan’s work is at once subtle and direct, warm and clear-eyed, and never less than beautifully written. He has a moving ability to express the hopes and fears of “ordinary” people, and he knows intimately the ways of the world. He richly deserves an international reputation. This writer is the real thing. – John Banville
A welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing. – Edna O’Brien

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.

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