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Title: Mary and O'Neil

Author: Justin Cronin

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-12-13

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 37 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Mary and ONeil frequently marveled at how, of all the lives they might have led, they had somehow found this one together. When they met at the Philadelphia high school where theyd come to teach, each had suffered a profound loss that had not healed. How likely was it that they could learn to trust, much less love, again?

Justin Cronins poignant debut traces the lives of Mary Olson and ONeil Burke, two vulnerable young teachers who rediscover in each other a world alive with promise and hope. From the formative experiences of their early adulthood to marriage, parenthood, and beyond, this novel in stories illuminates the moments of grace that enable Mary and ONeil to make peace with the deep emotional legacies that haunt them: the sudden, mysterious death of ONeils parents, Marys long-ago decision to end a pregnancy, ONeils sisters battle with illness and a troubled marriage. Alive with magical nuance and unexpected encounters, Mary and ONeil celebrates the uncommon in common lives, and the redemptive power of love.

Critic Reviews:

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

"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)

"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)

Members Reviews:

GREAT

I loved it. this is my new favorite author. this is the fifth book I have listened to in less than a month. I can't get enough of him.

mundane

Like most people, life has highs and lows. People vary in their ability to cope. We can learn from some a new skill, but others are just ordinary, illiciting neither praise nor censure. The characters in this book are dull. They do not stimulate thought. The only nice thing was the relationship between brother and sister. I finished it only because it has been a habit of mine to finish any book I start because I can speed read. While I enjoy audible books, I do not have time to waste long hours with something that bores me. I guess it is time to change my habits. This author has written other books I enjoyed, but I cannot recommend this one.

Wanted to like it.

I seriously need something funny to read after this one. I want to read about something other than death and loss and trauma. I was not expecting that this would be a narrative which strings together the many tragedies of a life. And not much else.

The narrator had a rather sing-song quality which I found difficult to listen to right from the start.

If your life is a bowl full of cherries and you need a reality check, this is for you. Not for me, at least not this week.