Mary and O'Neil

±1±: Now is the time Mary and O'Neil Order Today!

Nice Design by :

Over All Rating Reviews :

Great Deal :
$7.94
Date Created :
Jun 24, 2010 05:45:05

Mary and O’Neil 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 they’d 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 Cronin’s poignant debut traces the lives of Mary Olson and O’Neil 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 O’Neil to make peace with the deep emotional legacies that haunt them: the sudden, mysterious death of O’Neil’s parents, Mary’s long-ago decision to end a pregnancy, O’Neil’s sister’s battle with illness and a troubled marriage. Alive with magical nuance and unexpected encounters, Mary and O’Neil celebrates the uncommon in common lives, and the redemptive power of love.


Read More Full Content...

±1±: Best Buy Justin's Cronin's first novel is broken up into a collection of eight short stories about the love between parents, siblings, children and lovers.

The book doesn't begin with the title characters, but rather with O'Neil's parents, Arthur and Miriam. The entirety of the book is balanced on the early revelation of the sweet complexity of their love in life and death. Their death in the first story sets the tone for the rest of the stories, providing their children with both answers and more questions about love and loss.

Mary and O'Neil's love affair is one brought about by just these questions. Mary lives with the ghost of a child she aborted early on in the book, while O'Neil's parents live in his memory with such vitality that he actually tries to call them after the birth of his first child--only to unexpectedly have a sad and beautiful conversation with a lonely stranger. Cronin creates Mary and O'Neil as the answers to each other's questions. Even the names that Cronin picks for them overflow with a sense of completeness: "Mary" and "O'Neil," sound more like a first name and surname than two separate characters.

The surname as name only makes more sense when one considers O'Neil's presence in the book as father figure. It is O'Neil who develops as a source of strength for several characters in the book, anointing him the ultimate patriarch of this novel. Cronin is poetic and beautifully subtle when he baptizes O'Neil's relationship with the woman who completes him and gives him a first name. The baptism is complete when Mary is ready to walk down the aisle and it begins to rain. O'Neil looks at her and all the guests at their wedding and, Cronin writes, "in his heart he marries each one of them."

Cronin's style is delicate and full of purpose, just like all of the relationships between his characters. It is hard not to relate to this book in some way if you've ever loved someone, harder still to not find Cronin's prose captivating in its wisdom and sincerity.
on Sale!

• The Summer Guest
• The Passage
• So Cold the River
• Envy the Night
• The Breach

Tags : !: Good 1080p Tvs +99% Buying Plasma HDTV !: Apple iMac MC413LL/A 21.5-Inch Desktop by Apple !1#: Bargain Sale Best Samsung Lcd Hdtv !: Fernseher 32 Zoll Weiß

The Passage

±1±: Now is the time The Passage Order Today!

Nice Design by :

Over All Rating Reviews :

Great Deal :
$13.94
Date Created :
Jun 16, 2010 05:41:26

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.” 

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.

With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.

Read More Full Content...

±1±: Best Buy I'm not necessarily a fan of apocalyptic fiction, and I've never read a book on the end of times more powerful than The Road, but I did enjoy this one especially because I read it on my Kindle and didn't have to juggle the hardcover.

I compare this and the anticipated two future books to S.M. Stirling's series that started with Dies the Fire. However, as much as I like the first book I lost interest in Stirling's series because I could not get past the Dungeon and Dragons language and Wiccan elements, etc. It came across as stilted and unnecessary although the premise -- a failure of technology -- is actually more believable than a failure of a military experiment that creates a form of vampire.

What I did like about The Passage was its flawed and multi-dimensional characters -- the first section that sets the stage read quickly and drew me into Amy and Wolgast as well as her mother and her downward spiral that read so true.

Once the story jumps ahead almost 100 years, the premise of a handful of survivors depending upon an small power grid for survival and knowlege among a few that it would eventually fail range true. Again, I thought the characters were well drawn and I emotionally connected with them. One drawback, as in Stirling's books, was the use of words and terminology used to describe the roles people played in the surviving society -- watches, wrenches, Littles, etc. Just didn't carry a whiff of authenticity. Why not call them guards, mechanics or electricians, and kids or children?

I look forward to a continuation of the story. on Sale!

• The Summer Guest
• Blood Oath
• Mary and O'Neil
• The Breach
• So Cold the River

Relate Link : !: Order Plasma HDTV !: Stylish Living Room Sofas !# Heater Core Review !# Arts Decide Now !: Compact Digital Slr Top Quality