Listen free for 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Mary and O'Neil cover art

Mary and O'Neil

Written by: Justin Cronin
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $32.42

Buy Now for $32.42

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

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.

©2001 Justin Cronin (P)2013 Random House Audio

What the critics say

"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)

What listeners say about Mary and O'Neil

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.