Set in a working-class town on the Rhode Island coast, O’Nan’s latest is a crushing, beautifully written, and profoundly compelling novel about sisters, mothers, and daughters, and the terrible things love makes us do.
OCEAN STATE
by Stewart O’Nan
Grove Press, March 2022
(via The Gernert Company)
In the first line of OCEAN STATE, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the build-up to and fall-out from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. Angel, the murderer, Carol, her mother, and Birdy, the victim, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable. Watching over it all is the retrospective testimony of Angel’s younger sister Marie, who reflects on that doomed autumn of 2009 with all the wisdom of hindsight.
Angel and Birdy love the same teenage boy, frantically and single mindedly, and are compelled by the intensity of their feelings to extremes neither could have anticipated. O’Nan’s expert hand paints a fully realized portrait of these women, but also weaves a compelling and heartbreaking story of working-class life in Ashaway, Rhode Island. Propulsive, moving, and deeply rendered, OCEAN STATE is a masterful novel by one of our greatest storytellers.
“Stewart O’Nan’s haunting and fleet Ocean State tunnels deeply into the heady, hard lives of the vivid young women at its center. Half-broken and full of longing, these women move us deeply. As the story hurtles toward an act of violence that feels both impossible and inexorable, we find ourselves wanting to stop and protect all of them.” —Megan Abbott
“One of Stewart O’Nan’s many gifts is a keen and unflinching eye lit with an abiding compassion for his characters, all of which is on display in his mesmerizing new novel, Ocean State. Set in the forgotten streets of post-industrial, blue collar Rhode Island, this timely and gritty tale takes us deeply into the lives of girls and women who must navigate the kind of loss that can either break or strengthen the ties that bind us all. Ocean State is a gem glittering in the darkness.” —Andre Dubus III
“Stewart O’Nan is out to break your heart in the most beautiful way. He is writing with his full power unleashed. This book is a classic.” —Luis Alberto Urrea
Stewart O’Nan is the author of numerous books, including Wish You Were Here, Everyday People, In the Walled City, The Speed Queen, and Emily, Alone. His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his family.
Bestselling novelists Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan present an elegant, international anthology of erotica that explores the diverse spectrum of desire, written by winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN Awards, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Edgar Award, and more. There are stories of sexual obsession and sexual love, of domination and submission. There’s revenge sex, unrequited sex, funny sex, tortured sex, fairy tale sex, and even sex in the afterlife.
Bookworm Annie’s world has always been shaped by words. But her dream of writing a novel is long forgotten, and the man with whom she was supposed to spend the rest of her life has said ‘I do’ to someone else. She is devastated, and her friend persuades her to spend a few days in a hotel on Dartmoor to forget those painful events. One day, Annie stumbles across something very special: a notebook hidden in a red letterbox. Annie is deeply touched by what she reads in it, and when two pages that have been stuck together reveal the author’s address, she decides to track him down. Little does she suspect that her search will lead her to taciturn Jack, who is nothing like what she’d imagined the notebook’s author to be – but who nevertheless gets under her skin …
She is 30 years old and her name is Kieu, like the girl in the most famous work of Vietnamese literature. But she prefers to go by « Kim » because it’s easier in Berlin. In 1968, her parents had come to Germany from Saigon. She often wished for a family that didn’t have to become German first, but simply was. The loss of her Vietnamese roots has never bothered her. On the contrary. Until she receives a message. On Facebook. From her uncle. Who has been living in California since he fled.
We don’t choose the times we live in nor the times that shape us. Neither did Lud and Alma. Lud, who was born in 1899, and his brother Wilhelm revere Bach and Hölderlin, and share the same unattainable ideals. Wilhelm, who joins the Nazi party early on, measures others according to its standards; Lud measures himself by them, which torments him for the rest of his life. Alma lost her parents when she was a child, and her godfather Lud – who is only a few years older than her – and his housekeeper become a kind of new family for her.