Poetic meditation on secret liaison at a crossroads

Fiction: My Coney Island Baby, Billy O'Callaghan, Jonathan Cape, paperback, 256 pages, €16

Vibrancy: Cork writer Billy O'Callaghan

Hilary A White

A couple walk the Coney Island promenade in a wintry gale, huddling in to each other as they walk past row after row of boarded-up stalls and amusements. Both are married but they have danced this waltz every month for 25 years, ever since they met in a bar and the stars aligned.

Michael is a native of Inishbofin, who, like so many of his generation, relocated to New York in search of a horizon broader than that offered by the wind-lashed Connemara island. Caitlin, meanwhile, is a lapsed writer whose married life is as stagnant and unaffectionate as Michael's, with little truly shared between her and her captain-of-industry husband.