MARY
AND O'NEIL by Justin Cronin in an unabashedly moving and
even-hearted book about two people and the relationships they share
throughout their lives --- with siblings, friends, parents,
children, each other. Justin Cronin writes this first novel as if
he has lived in each of the character's skin for a long, long
while. He even covers the specifics of labor and delivery as if he
has been pregnant, which we know he has not (although he is a
father, and that counts for something). As first novels go, this
one is wonderful.Like
the work of Annie Dillard, Cronin finds a simple and
easy-to-understand way of explaining emotional situations so that
you can get inside them from the outset. He doesn't resort to
literary trickery or emotional thievery --- his remarks and
observations are clear, concise and honest. Whether O'Neil is
trying to take hold of the immensity of feeling he discovers as his
fiancee walks down their wedding aisle or is attempting to grasp
the reality of the sentence "My wife and daughter are resting
upstairs," this Everyman is an engaging and pure-hearted guy that
we can all fall in love with (or recognize as having traits of the
people we already love in real life). Mary's tenacity, her
emotional equilibrium, and her matter-of-factness will remind
readers of their best girl friends --- in short, these people are
people we could know in the real world.The
stories somehow glide together, ending with unexpected twists,
feeling like the handwritten captions on photographs pulled out of
yellowing scrapbooks from our family files. The milestones of life
are events that we can all share, but it takes a confident and
exciting writer to put it all on paper. Justin Cronin is that kind
of writer. MARY AND O'NEIL is a must read.