My Coney Island Baby

<p><strong>An illicit meeting between long-term lovers makes for a poignant piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time...In the closing pages O'Callaghan's prose reaches a pitch of emotional intensity that ensures these characters will linger with you long after the book is closed. -- <em>The Guardian</em></strong></p><p><strong>Radiant with beauty longing and desire and deeply touching this riveting novel reminiscent of the works of William Trevor and Colm Tóibín evokes the long love affair between a man and a woman each married to another who meet every month in a decaying hotel in Coney Island Brooklyn.</strong></p><p>On a bitterly cold winter's afternoon Michael and Caitlin two middle-aged lovers escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit date. Once a month for the past quarter of a century Coney Island has been their haven the place in which they have abandoned themselves to their love.</p><p>These beautiful carefully-rationed days have long sustained Michael and Caitlin's love and have helped help them survive the tedium of their lives separate from each other. But now amid the howling winds whipping off the Atlantic and a snow storm blackening the horizon this nearly abandoned resort feels like the edge of the world. On this winter day burrowed in their private cocoon they will discover that their lives are on the brink of change.</p><p>Michael's wife is battling cancer and Caitlin's husband is about to receive a major promotion which will involve relocating to the Midwest. After half a lifetime together in their most intimate moments certain long-denied facts must be faced decisions made consequences weighed and maybe just maybe chances finally taken.</p><p>A quiet intense depiction of love and intimacy <em>My Coney Island Baby</em> reveals within the course of a single day's passing the histories landscapes tragedies and occasional moments of wonder that constitute the lives of two people who although living worlds apart have been inexorably drawn together. But even in this most private of retreats a place seemingly built for romance the most heartbreaking of realities loom.</p>