Billy O'Callaghan

Longlisted for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award Sometimes the past endures—and sometimes it never lets go. This best-selling debut by an award-winning writer is both an eerie contemporary ghost story and a dread-inducing psychological thriller. Maggie is a successful young artist who has had bad luck with men. Her last put her in the hospital and, after she’s healed physically, left her needing to get out of London to heal mentally and find a place of quiet that will restore her creative spirit. On the rugged west coast of Ireland, perched on a wild cliff side, she spies the shell of a cottage that dates back to Great Famine and decides to buy it. When work on the house is done, she invites her dealer to come for the weekend to celebrate along with a couple of women friends, one of whom will become his wife. On the boozy last night, the other friend pulls out an Ouija board. What sinister thing they summon, once invited, will never go. Ireland is a country haunted by its past. In Billy O'Callaghan's hands, its terrible beauty becomes a force of inescapable horror that reaches far back in time, before the Famine, before Christianity, to a pagan place where nature and superstition are bound in an endless knot.

A Novel

The Dead House

The unforgettable tale of love, abandonment, hunger and redemption, from the Irish writer who 'grips from the opening page' (Bernard MacLaverty) Life Sentences is the sweeping and immersive story of one ordinary family in Ireland, and their extraordinary journey over three generations and more than a century of famine, war, violence and love. At sixteen Nancy leaves her small island for the mainland, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. And in the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, moments away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies in store for those who will survive her. A taut domestic drama of epic emotional scope, and a moving portrait of life in Ireland throughout modern history, this novel goes on making the heart lurch long after the final page. Set in the village where Billy O'Callaghan's family has lived for generations, it is partly based on stories told by his parents and grandparents. His writing is imbued with truth and lived experience - creating a novel so rich in life and empathy it is impossible to let go of his characters. 'A welcome voice to the pantheon of new Irish writing' Edna O'Brien 'Billy O'Callaghan belongs now in the recognised front rank, along with Bernard MacLaverty, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor and Colm Toibin' Tablet 'His prose is a feast after a famine... Invariably delightful' Irish Times.

Life Sentences

Els amants de Coney Island

Thirteen short Stories that explore how people in crisis can pick up the shattered pieces of their lives and find among them some glint of worth.

And Other Short Stories

The Things We Lose, the Things We Leave Behind

My Coney Island Baby

Román je příběhem hlubokého citového vztahu, který trvá již více než dvacet let a vznikl z docela nenápadného a víceméně náhodného setkání. Už dvacet pět let se každý měsíc setkávají na brooklynském Coney Islandu, kde spolu stráví den. Michael a Caitlin znají navzájem každou svou vrásku, vědí, co znamená to které drobné gesto, přesto je mezi nimi mnoho nevyřčeného. Kdysi na sebe narazili v jednom baru a od té doby věděli, že k sobě svým způsobem patří. Jenže doma na ně čekali jiní partneři, které nešlo opustit. Poslední setkání v omšelém hotelu přináší otázku, zda to tak musí zůstat napořád. Nakladatelská anotace. Kráceno.

Náš Coney Island

An einem bitterkalten Winternachmittag treffen sich Michael und Caitlin auf Coney Island. Beide sind verheiratet, aber nicht miteinander, und seit 25 Jahren schon ist der nostalgische Vergnügungspark einmal im Monat ihr Refugium: Heimliche Stunden der Liebe, nach denen sie sich sehnen, und doch kehren sie danach jedes Mal wieder zu ihren Ehepartnern zurück, denen sie sich verpflichtet fühlen. Aber diesmal, während draußen vor dem verlassenen Hotel ein fürchterlicher Schneesturm tobt, erscheint ihnen ihr Zufluchtsort wie das Ende der Welt. Und in beider Leben sind Veränderungen eingetreten, die womöglich eine endgültige, lang hinausgeschobene Entscheidung verlangen ...

Roman

Die Liebenden von Coney Island

Už dvacet pět let se každý měsíc setkávají na brooklynském Coney Islandu, kde spolu stráví den. Michael a Caitlin znají navzájem každou svou vrásku, vědí, co znamená to které drobné gesto, přesto je mezi nimi mnoho nevyřčeného. Kdysi na sebe narazili v jednom baru a od té doby věděli, že k sobě svým způsobem patří. Jenže doma na ně čekali jiní partneři, které nešlo opustit. Poslední setkání v omšelém hotelu přináší otázku, zda to tak musí zůstat napořád. O’Callaghanovi se neokázalým stylem podařilo zachytit příběh hluboké lásky, jako by věděl, že všechny velké příběhy vypadají na první pohled nenápadně. Velké kouzlo románu tkví také v jazyku a struktuře, zde O’Callaghan mistrovsky zúročil své povídkářské zkušenosti. Román mu přinesl úspěch u kritiky i čtenářů a pověst nového irského literárního objevu.

The breathtaking short story collection from the Costa-shortlisted Irish writer Three gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man's life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully in his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labour rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; a pair of newly-weds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island. Spanning a century and two continents - from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an aeroplane bound for Taipei - these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, Billy O'Callaghan's stories explore the resilience of the human heart and its ability to keep beating even in the wake of grief, trauma and lost love. 'The best fiction I have read this year... Taut, subtle and moving, and brought off beautifully' John Banville, Best Books of 2020, Irish Times

The Boatman and Other Stories

A new collection of short stories from multi-award-winning author, Billy O'Callaghan. In these new stories, O'Callaghan continues to explore the edges of society. His characters are the marginalised, the outsiders and those clinging to hope.

In Too Deep, and Other Short Stories

An exquisite, heart-breaking novel by an Irish discovery. Radiant with beauty, longing, and desire, and deeply touching, this literary 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. 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. 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. 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. A quiet, intense depiction of love and intimacy, My Coney Island Baby 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.

“I know of no writer on either side of the Atlantic who is better at exploring the human spirit under assault than Billy O’Callaghan.”—Robert Olen Butler The prizewinning Irish short-story writer and author of the highly praised novel, My Coney Island Baby, delivers his most accomplished book of short fiction to date—a poignant story collection that “grips from the opening page” (Bernard MacLaverty). These are twelve poignant, quietly dazzling, and carefully crafted stories that explore the resiliency of the human heart and its ability to keep beating in the wake of bereavement, violence, lost love, and incomparable trauma and grief. Spanning a century and two continents, from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an airplane bound for Taipei, The Boatman and Other Stories follows an unforgettable cast of characters. Three gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man’s life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully within his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labor rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; and a pair of newlyweds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island. Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. Billy O’Callaghan is a master celebrant of the smallness of the human flame against the dark: its strength and its steady brightness.

'A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time... will linger with you long after the book is closed' Guardian On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven; these precious, hidden hours their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other.

Billy O'Callaghan

About

Books

Join the club