Mary And O'Neil: A Novel In Stories (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
4.5 StarsMary and O’Neil is Justin Cronin’s debut a novel, a book that many of my friends here at Goodreads have recommended to me. I read Cronin’s The Passage, a novel that I should have loved, but just never really connected with. This book like many others is simply a quiet piece of life. It has its focus on the love between a Parent and Child, Love between two very different siblings, and even love between man and woman. It also is heavily weighed down with loss and tragedy. Yet amazingly, this real to life piece of fiction seemed to me to be mostly about the beauty of life itself, tragedy and loss aside. We are treated to many quiet scenes where life details are colored out for us and made three dimensional. We quickly empathize and bond with all the characters each having a unique outlook and point of view that adds to the depth of this book. The writing in this book is a true standout. You have heard it all before, poetic, lyrical, and magical too. Many of the scenes seemed to be so real to life that you could actually feel like you were there too. Quiet beauty is the best way to describe it.I have for you two rather long quotes that to me capture the essence of this wonderful read:“Later, when O’Neil imagines the accident—in the days and weeks that follow, and then for years to come—he imagines that it occurs in silence, and that his parents’ eyes are closed. Their eyes are closed like children asleep in a car at night, their faces and bodies in perfect, trusting repose, his father at the wheel, his mother beside him, and though it makes no sense to think it, he sees them holding hands—as O’Neil will one day hold his daughter’s hand when a nightmare has awakened her, to tell her that he is there beside her, that in sleep we have nothing to fear. Silence, and his parents, and the snow: he inhabits this moment as if it were not imagined but remembered, with a vividness that seems to lodge in his bones, just as he feels, with his body, the moment when the car lifts on the ice and begins its long, languid arc toward the embankment. There is no guardrail, nothing for the car’s front end to strike, to impede its progress or in any way change the nature of the scene, its dreamlike silence. The total, parabolic energy of their vehicle—thirty-five hundred pounds of diesel-powered French station wagon, traveling at or about the legal speed limit of fifty miles per hour—is suddenly, amazingly, tractionless. It is unbounded, set loose from the earth, and though jealous gravity will soon assert itself, whisking his parents to the valley floor at a velocity sufficient to snap the chassis in two, for this moment they are free; they are as free as ghosts, as comets, they are streaking across the heavens; Arthur and Miriam, together at last.”“Though some might have thought this a morbid scene, a pair of orphans moping around the house, in fact the weeks following their parents’ death passed quickly and became, for O’Neil, a time of strange and unexpected contentment. Unhappiness, he discovered, was an emotion distinct from grief, and he found it was possible both to miss his parents terribly—a loss so overwhelming he simply couldn’t take it all in, like looking at a skyscraper up close—while also finding in the job of settling their affairs a satisfying orderliness. Accounts to be closed, bills to be paid, letters to be read and discarded, clothing to be boxed and carted off: he knew what he and Kay were doing—they were erasing their parents, removing the last evidence of their lives from the earth. It was, O’Neil knew, a way of saying good-bye, and yet with each trip to the Goodwill box behind the Price Chopper, each final phone call to a bank or loan company, he felt his parents becoming real to him in a way that they had never been in life. More than real: he felt them move inside him. Jack had returned to New Haven a few days after the funeral, and alone in the house, O’Neil and Kay slipped into a pattern that was, he realized, the same one his parents had kept, or nearly. The hours they ate and worked and slept, their habit of meeting in the living room in the evenings for a cup of tea—these were all things their parents had done, and on a night close to the end of their time together, O’Neil dreamed that he and Kay were married. It was a dream in which they were both the same and also different—they were at once their parents and themselves—and when he awoke in his old bedroom under the eaves, he felt not revulsion or shame but a fleeting certainty that he had been touched by the world of the spirits.”Cronin works his magic by penning these stories in such a way that nothing is ever rushed yet at the same time things are never too slow. There is just the right amount of pacing and plot movement to keep us turning the pages. By the time I reached the end of this book I was physically tired due to the emotional toll brought on by the story. Like the book itself, I was left quietly very satisfied and full. I highly recommend this book to fiction lovers and will now have to queue up a reread of The Passage.Beautifully Sad!!!
This book is just a beautiful kind of beautiful. Most of you would probably consider it a 4, but it resonated with me at this point in my life (possibly my looming 30th birthday?...*silent sobs*) The storyline revolves around O'Neil as he grows from a warm-hearted collegiate goofball into an even warmer-hearted, middle-aged goofball (now with a little more insight into life). Themes address loss/mourning, the psychology of being at adult orphan, growing older, the power of different life stages... In other words, just under the words of the book, you can hear it's theme song--"To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season..." I awarded it the rare 5-stars because it met my criteria of changing the way I look at everyday life.Don't be confused by the title--it has almost nothing at all to do with Mary or the other narrators, except as they contribute to O'Neil. It is HIS story--although, I must say, he shares quite nicely. (If you realize this early on, you'll enjoy the book more. It took me a few chapters to get over it.) The book also contains amazing dream sequences and the most beautifully accurate account of childbirth that I have ever read (although the moment of birth was a little glossed-over). Kind of nice to go back and experience the miracle of childbirth again-- this time without all the excruciating pain. I'm quite amazed a man wrote it, frankly. Cronin is a highly metaphorical writer, in both the "little way" and the "big way" (as I call it). Almost every sentence is loaded with a metaphor - so if that's not your thing, you'll probably label this book cheesy. However, Cronin handles his metaphors in a gentle, precise way that I found extraordinarily nuanced. The book also revolves around a "big" metaphor - namely, the changing weather as a representation of the "seasons of life" (turn, turn, turn). Storm clouds heavy with snow come to represent time, age, and hard times ahead, while sunshine and springtime represent hope, happiness, and youth. The most beautiful moment of the book to me was O'Neil's realization that the seasons overlap:"The winter was snowless and mild; many of the trees were still dropping their leaves, though the autumn was long gone and the first of May's bulbs, the crocus and hyacinth, had appeared. Had he simply failed to notice it in winters past, this anachronistic overlapping of the seasons?... Later he asked a colleague, who taught science, about what he had seen. 'They're white oaks, O'Neil,' he replied... 'Didn't you know? They keep their leaves all winter.'..." (Here's hoping we can do the same, yes?)Overall, this is a complex, moving book if you enjoy the deep and metaphorical. If you don't, RUN AWAY.FAVORITE QUOTES:"God, thank you for the beauty of this time of year, the leaves on the trees by the river where I walked yesterday, thank you for the sky and earth, which you, I guess, in your wisdom, will have to cover with snow for a while, so we don't forget who's boss." (Arthur)If asked, Arthur would say he didn't so much begin his life as find it, like a wallet or a ring of keys he'd merely mislaid.The moment felt frozen, as if neither of them could leave it.Miriam would be waiting for him in the library foyer, clutching her books and papers and all her nervousness to her chest.Nowhere, at no time, has she uttered the word CANCER, nor heard it used. The breast was "affected." The mass was "palpable." The patient was "married." She, Miriam Burke, was something--someWHERE--else.O'Neil has had girlfriends before, but this... is different; he is entering the web, the matrix of a thousand details that make another person real, not just an object to be wanted.They did not seem to like one another very much, though Mary had come to understand this was common with men who lived together and were also friends.His heart expands at the sight of this happy and attractive place that exists for no reason.It is a lonely feeling, he realizes, watching your wife have a baby. With each passing hour she moves farther away from him, into a place where all her strength comes from.He drove a car to work, lived in a house twice as old as he was, looked at the stars when he cared to, feeling only the vague appreciation one gave to anything beautiful and useless and far away.
What do You think about Mary And O'Neil: A Novel In Stories (2002)?
Wow. The book is not long, yet somehow so much is just packed into each word and carefully chosen turn of phrase. It made me laugh at times, and at others, just one sentence would take my breath away and leave me in tears. I loved each and every character, and appreciated how carefully and lovingly Cronin crafted them. I worried about how it would end, and how I would say good bye, but it was beautiful. Now I have to move on and choose something else, and this was the kind of book that leaves you feeling as if nothing will ever fill you like this did and the looming choices are no longer exciting, they're sad.
—Sue
‘The moment would pass but until it did, no one was going anywhere.’This novel uses eight linked stories of different length and from different perspectives to bring to life the characters of Mary and O’Neil. The stories, focussed on particular events in their lives, are dated so that we can follow the chronology of the events that have shaped the characters of Mary and O’Neil. Most powerful of the stories, for me, was the opening story entitled ‘Last of the Leaves’. The central characters in this story are O’Neil’s parents, Arthur and Miriam. The story opens in November 1979, with Arthur’s premonition of death, on a day in which he and Miriam are travelling to visit O’Neil at college. While they are preparing for this trip we learn that each has secrets, and what these secrets are. We learn too that individual secrets can be put aside or forgotten in the shared joy of seeing O’Neil happy. This visit has a tragic aftermath which influences the balance of the novel without overshadowing the events yet to unfold.I enjoyed this novel with its bittersweet observations of different life events, both joyous and tragic. In fewer than 300 pages, Mr Cronin creates likeable and human characters whose experiences both as individuals and as members of family units will be recognisable to so many readers.With fewer than 300 pages, this is a comparatively quick read. Quick, but not necessarily easy. This is the first of Mr Cronin’s novels I have read, and I am looking forward to reading the others.Jennifer Cameron-Smith
—Jennifer (JC-S)
After reading The Passage and really enjoying it, I discovered earlier novels by Justin Cronin. Not long ago, I read Mr. Cronin's novel, The Summer Guest, and I loved it as well. This novel, Mary and O'Neil, is actually Mr. Cronin's first novel and it is fantastic! If you're looking for a fast paced, action packed novel like The Passage, then this book is not for you; however, if you really enjoy a character driven story as I do, I think you will love it!As was the case with Mr. Cronin's, The Summer Guest, this story is told in a collection of short stories... beginning in November of 1979 and ending in September of 2000. Each short story follows the members of the Burke family.... Arthur, Miriam, Kay and O'Neil. These chapters together tell the story of this rather ordinary family and in reading their story, you just may see something of yourself or your own family... I know I did.Although each member of the Burke family is introduced and written about, I felt that O'Neil was the main focus of the novel. The story was mainly told through his eyes and we learned of the other family members by his thoughts and feelings about what transpired in his family. In the beginning of the novel, tragedy struck the Burke family during a parent weekend at the college O'Neil was attending at the time. Because of this tragedy, the Burke family was forever changed and the rest of the story portrays the ways in which this family dealt with and learned to live with the tragedy.As in any family after a loss occurs, O'Neil and his sister, Kay, start the long and painful process of moving on in their lives and the subsequent chapters are about these siblings.. their relationship with each other and how they came to terms with their painful loss.... and yet still remaining a family. O'Neil goes on to meet Mary... a young woman who has also experienced a profound loss of her own and carries her grief deep inside. The two end up marrying and we follow these characters throughout the rest of the novel... their joys, their disappointments and their sorrows... and what we come to find, I believe, is what Mr. Cronin was trying to convey through his beautifully written prose..... a human life is made up of many moments, weeks, months and years. We, as human beings, experience all of the joys and sorrows that come with life. We follow O'Neil, Mary, Kay and their families through weddings, births, graduations and funerals... each of these occasions bring family members together and help weave the tapestry which makes up a human life.. a family.Through his beautifully written prose, Mr. Cronin has proven himself to be a gifted storyteller with extraordinary human insight. I look forward to reading more of his very impressive work!
—Darlene
