{"product_id":"mary-and-oneil-isbn-9780385333597","title":"Mary and O'Neil","description":"\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE PEN\/HEMINGWAY AWARD • “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, \u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMary and O’Neil: They are like any other couple. They have survived loss and found love and managed the occasional hard-earned laugh as they move toward the future, hearts thick with hope. Each human life is ever changing, born of moments large and small—births and deaths and weddings, grave mistakes and chance encounters and acts of surprising courage—and in this unforgettable book, Justin Cronin makes vivid how those moments connect us all, making us more than we could ever be on our own. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlight with nuance, sly humor, and startling wisdom, \u003ci\u003eMary and O’Neil\u003c\/i\u003e celebrates the uncommon grace to be found in common lives\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eMary and O’Neil\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Admirably fearless.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The kind of storytelling that goes down easy, and sticks to your ribs.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Cronin succeeds, touchingly and tenderly, in portraying life itself as a triumph of hope over experience.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“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.”\u003cb\u003e—Ann Patchett, \u003ci\u003eChicago  Tribune \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A literary love story . . . about the fragility of good fortune and the  accidental ways of finding happiness.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “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.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “Justin Cronin’s \u003ci\u003eMary and O’Neil\u003c\/i\u003e is that rare thing: a wholly engrossing story of the ordinary life.”\u003cb\u003e—Madison Smartt Bell, author of \u003ci\u003eAll Souls’  Rising\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJustin Cronin \u003c\/b\u003eis a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and associate professor   of English at La Salle University.  His work has appeared in many literary journals,   including \u003ci\u003eEpoch, Greensboro Review,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCrescent Review,\u003c\/i\u003e and in \u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia   Inquirer Magazine.\u003c\/i\u003e He lives with his wife and their young daughter in Philadelphia.Last of the Leaves\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e November 1979\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur in darkness--drifting, drifting--the planet   spinning toward dawn: he awakens in gray November daybreak to the sounds of running   water and a great arm brushing the side of his house. The wind, he thinks, the wind;   the end of autumn, the last of the leaves pulled away. The running water, he understands,   was never real. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He lies in the dark of the bedroom he shares with his wife, waiting   for the dream to fade--a dream in which, together, they sail over a cliff into blackness.   What else? A sense of water below, a lake or stream, Miriam's hand in his, of everything   loosed from the earth; a feeling like accomplishment, shapes fitting together with   mathematical precision, all the equations of the heavens ringing. A dream of final   happiness, in which they, Arthur and Miriam, together, at the last, die.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur   rises, takes a wool sweater from the chair by his bed, pushes his feet into the warm   pockets of his slippers. He draws the sweater over his head, his twisted pajama top;   he puts on his glasses and pauses, letting his eyes, cakey with sleep, adjust. In   the feeble, trembling light (The moon? A streetlamp? The day is hours off), he discerns   the form of his wife, a crescent-shaped ridge beneath the blankets, and knows her   face and body are turned away from him, toward the window, open two inches to admit   a trail of cold night air. How is it possible he knows he is going to die?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And that   the thought does not grieve him? But the feeling, he believes, is just a tattered   remnant of his dream, still near to him in the dark and cold of the predawn room,   Arthur still, after all, in his pajamas; by breakfast it will recede, by lunchtime   it will vanish altogether, dissolving into the day like a drop of iodine in water.   Is it possible he is still asleep? And Arthur realizes this is probably true; he   is fast asleep, standing in the icy bedroom, knees locked, his chin lolled forward   into the downy fan of hair on his chest; he is, in fact, about to snore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To snore!   And with this his head snaps to attention, his eyes fly open; he is, at last and   truly, awake, dropped as if from a great height to land, perfectly uninjured, here.   The living, breathing Arthur. But to be fifty-six years old, and dream of death,   and not be afraid; this thought has somehow survived the journey into Arthur's encroaching   day, hardening to a kernel of certainty in his heart. He shakes his head at the oddness   of this fact, then at the coldness of the room, Christ Almighty; even in the dark   Arthur can see his breath billowing before him like a cloud of crystals. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Below   the blue bulk of their bedding his wife adjusts herself, pulling the blankets tighter,   as if to meet his thought; a hump disengages itself from the small of her back, travels   the width of the mattress to Arthur's side, and vanishes with the sound of four paws   striking the wide-plank floor. A flash of blond tail: the cat, Nestor, awakened from   its spot between them, darts through the bedskirts and is gone. Enough, Arthur thinks;   onward. He closes the window--a sudden silence, the wind sealed away from him--and   departs the bedroom, shutting the door with a muffled snap. Behind it his wife will   sleep for hours.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Downstairs, his mind on nothing, Arthur fills a carafe with water   from the kitchen sink, pours it into the coffeemaker, scoops the fragrant dirt of   ground beans into the paper filter, and turns on the machine; he sits at the table   and waits. Dear God, he thinks, thank you for this day, this cup of coffee (not long   now; the machine, sighing good-naturedly to life, exhales a plume of steam and releases   a ricocheting stream into the pot), and while we're at it, 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. I like the winter   fine, but it would be nice if it wasn't a bad one. This is just a suggestion. Amen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur opens his eyes; a pale light has begun to gather outside, deepening his view   of the sloping yard and the tangle of woods beyond. He pours the coffee, spoons in   sugar, softens its color with a dollop of milk; he stands at the counter and drinks.   Not a bad one, please.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Today is the day they will drive six hours north to see their   son, a sophomore in college, lately and totally (or so he says, his voice on the   phone as bright as a cork shot from a bottle: totally, Pop) in love. Arthur doesn't   doubt this is the case, and why should he? What the hell? Why not be in love? He   sits at the kitchen table, dawn creeping up to his house; he thinks of the long day   and the drive through mountains ahead of him, the pleasure he will feel when, his   back and eyes sore from hours on the road, he pulls into the dormitory lot and his   boy, long legged and smiling and smart, bounds down the stairs to greet them. In   the foyer with its bulletin boards and scuffed linoleum and pay phone, the young   lady watches them through the dirty glass. Susan? Suzie? Arthur reviews the details.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Parents from Boston, JV field hockey first string (again the memory of his son's   voice, brightly laughing: But her ankles aren't thick, the way they get, you know,   Pop?); an English class they took together, Shakespeare or Shelley or Pope, and the   way she read a certain poem in class, the thrilling confidence in her voice cementing   the erotic bargain between them. (I mean, she looked right at me, Pop, the whole   time, I think she had the thing memorized; you should have seen it, the whole class   knew!) And Arthur knows what his son is saying to him: Here I am. Look. And Arthur   does: Susan or Suzie (Sarah?), fresh from her triumphs of love and smarts in the   marbled halls of academe, banging the hard rubber ball downfield on the bluest blue   New Hampshire autumn day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sounds above: Arthur hears the bedroom door open, his   wife's slippered trudge down the carpeted hall, the mellow groan of the pipes as   she fills the basin with water to wash. Arthur pours himself a second cup of coffee   and fills a mug for Miriam--extra sugar, no milk--positioning it on the table by   the back kitchen stairs. Outside the sky has turned a washed-out gray, like old plastic;   a disappointment. For a while Arthur sits at the table and watches the sky, asking   it to do better.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Miriam enters, wrapped in her pale-blue robe, and takes the coffee   almost without looking, a seamless transaction that always pleases him. She sips,   pauses, and sniffs at the mug.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"This is sort of old.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I've been up awhile,\" Arthur   says. \"I'll make a fresh pot if you want.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"No, I'll do it.\" But she doesn't; she   takes a place at the table across from him. Her face is scrubbed, her combed hair   pulled back from her face; she does not dye it, allowing the gray to come on without   fuss, nor perm it, the way so many women they know have done. Arthur lets his eyes   rest there, in the whiteness of the part of her hair, thinking of his dream, a vague   disturbance that no longer creates in him any particular emotion, as the widest rings   on pond water will lap the shore without effect. (Something about a lake? He no longer   recalls.) She holds the cup of old coffee with both hands, like a hot stone to warm   them, resting there on the table.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"What time is it?\" She yawns. \"Is it six-thirty?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur nods. \"I thought we should get an early start. We can stop for lunch at that   place in Northampton.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Not there.\" She shakes her head. \"Do you remember the last   time? Please. Let's stop someplace else.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur shrugs; he doesn't remember what   was wrong with the restaurant. \"I thought it was all right,\" he says. \"We can try   that place across the street. Or we can pack a lunch.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Miriam rises, dumps her mug   of coffee down the sink, and begins to make the pot she has promised herself. Arthur   watches his wife, full of a great, sad love for her; he knows this day will be hard.   Not the drive, which they have made many times; not seeing O'Neil, their son. Arthur   understands it is the girl she dreads. She tries to like the girls he likes, but   it is always difficult for her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"We have to be nice, you know.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Miriam stops rinsing   the pot. \"Quit reading my mind.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Okay. But we do.\" Arthur rises and goes to where   she is standing, her hands resting on the edge of the sink. He wraps his arms around   her slender waist and smells the beginnings of her tears--a sweet, phosphorescent   odor, like melting beeswax.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"It's stupid, I know.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I don't think it's stupid at   all. Why is it stupid?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I feel like someone in a play,\" she says. \"You know, the   mother? That old bitch, can't let go, nobody's good enough for her boy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"And you're   right. Nobody is. And you're not like that at all.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A heavy sigh. Still, Arthur   holds on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"She's just somebody he met in class. We've been through this--how many   times?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"They're probably sleeping together.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur nods. \"Probably.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"God, listen   to me.\" She shakes her head and resumes cleaning the pot. \"You probably think it's   just great.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur doesn't answer. The cat comes nosing into the kitchen and coils   first around Arthur's feet and then around Miriam's, asking to be let out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"That   goddamned cat,\" Arthur says. He kisses Miriam's neck, still warm with sleep and the   sheets of their bed. \"You know, I had the strangest dream,\" he says suddenly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Still   facing away, Miriam tips her head against his. \"I think I did too. So. Tell me about   yours.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur lets his eyes fall closed; in this interior darkness, his wife's   body pressed against his, her hips and his hips meeting--always the old rhythm implied,   the metronome of marriage--he imagines he is asleep and tries to return to his dream,   following it down a long hallway, a trick he has used before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I'm not sure,\" he   says after a moment. \"I've already forgotten.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Was it a bad dream?\" She is stroking   his hair. \"I heard you muttering.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I don't know.\" Arthur draws air into his chest.   \"Some of it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"What else?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur thinks. It is her voice he is following now;   below him, without warning, he suddenly feels the tug of blackness, a yawning chasm   as vast as a stadium. And something else: the smell of baking bread. He has never   had a dream like this before, of this he is certain. The memory of it makes him feel   strangely happy. He opens his eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I think you were in it.\" He shrugs at nothing;   already the information is gone, as is his memory that she, too, has dreamt, and   meant to tell him what. \"I think you saved me from something, as usual. So it was   a good dream.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She turns to face him then; her eyes still moist, she kisses him   quickly and smiles. Up close he sees that her face is tired, and newly thin: his   fault. Regret slices through him, and then, filling its wake, a pale and luminous   awe. How many times has she performed this duty? He searches her gray eyes with his   own. How many times has she been awakened from a sound slumber by a distant cry and   made her fumbling way down a darkened hall, to wrap herself around a son or daughter   whose arms flailed at nothing, saying, No, no, there's nothing to fear, none of it   was real? He asks this, and for an instant he imagines that the children are asleep   upstairs; but of course this is an illusion, a trick of time, like the pea that darts   from shell to shell unseen, and so is in both places at once and also neither. No:   it is morning in their kitchen, the children are grown and gone, O'Neil at college   waiting for their visit, his sister, Kay--moody, mysterious Kay--married now and   living her life in New Haven. The passage of years is amazing, a thing of wonder.   He stands before it as, in the past, he stood outside the children's doors, listening   to Miriam deliver the comforts he could not: a glass of water, a fresh blanket, Miriam   holding the child's hand in hers to say, squeezing, See? This is real. How many times?   A thousand? A thousand thousand? Count the stars in the heavens, Arthur thinks, and   you will know that number.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"You're welcome,\" she tells him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And their day begins.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Each of them has a secret. Here is Arthur's:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His secret is a letter, which he has   delayed writing until this morning, at the office where he works--a letter he will   never send. It is a letter to a woman not his wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Dear Dora, he writes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e How did   it come about? Even Arthur doesn't know; could not say, precisely, how it is that   on this morning in November he, Arthur, age fifty-six, a devoted married man for   twenty-nine years, has fallen in love (is he? in love?) with Dora Auclaire. But he   has; he does. Confusingly, he loves his wife no less because of it; he dares to think,   knowing it to be a kind of arrogance--something terribly, destructively male--that   he loves her even more. To think of Miriam is to think of himself, the span of his   life and his children's lives, and to know what is meant by a common destiny. He   is human, and therefore weak, but his weakness is for Miriam. He cannot look at her   and not feel love, or the fear that comes with love: that someday one of them will   be alone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But Dora Auclaire: he has known her--how long? Ten years? Fifteen? Did   they know one another when their children were small? Arthur allows himself the pleasure   of thinking of her, and what she might be doing now, at ten-thirty in the morning   on a Friday in fall at the busy clinic where she sees her patients: the young girls   in trouble, the old men wheezing from years of smoking, the tiny babies who have   cried, mysteriously, through the night. He sees her, moving from room to room--neither   gliding nor marching, her stride merely purposeful--wearing her clean white coat   with jeans and a sweater beneath (not much jewelry; earrings, perhaps, to complement   her heart-shaped face, and a single silver chain), touching, advising, jotting notes   on a chart in her fine, square print, before excusing herself to telephone the hospital   in Cooperstown to reserve a bed for the teenage boy in the examining room whose two-day   stomachache is almost certainly not caused by drugs, as his mother claims, but acute   appendicitis. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arthur, at his desk four blocks away, sees it all. (And before he   knows it, there is Miriam too: plunking a due-date card into the stamper at the checkout   desk, refiling spools of shiny microfilm, pushing a cart of books, heavy with facticity,   through the quiet, dusty aisles.) She is a lonely, spirited woman in her mid-forties,   a physician and a widow with two young sons--a woman who could chop a cord of wood   one minute and swab a toddler's throat the next--and Arthur loves her. He loves her   strong, thin hands, and her gleaming stethoscope, and her sadness, which she does   not wear around her like a shawl--some garment of mourning--but inside, in a deep   place he cannot see but feels: the same grief that he would carry if Miriam were   gone. Her husband, Sam, was a carpenter who restored old houses, and it was an old   house that killed him; six years ago, on a bright morning in May (Arthur remembers   reading of it in the papers), he stepped from the window of a fourth-story cupola   of a falling-down Queen Anne on Devereaux Street, placed his weight on a ledge that   turned out to be rotten with moisture, and down he went in a rattling rain of tools   and equipment, forty feet to the packed-dirt yard.Winner of the PEN\/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize; Author of The Passage","brand":"Dial Press Trade Paperback","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301231644901,"sku":"NP9780385333597","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385333597.jpg?v=1767732355","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/mary-and-oneil-isbn-9780385333597","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}