Ocean State by Stewart O'Nan was a depressing book about a "family" who was beyond dysfunctional, mostly because of the mother. There were two daughters trying to grow up with little or no assistance. Things went wrong, very wrong, and there was plenty of blame to go around. I was a very sad book, with me wanting to reach in shake people at every turn, not just this family. Residents of small towns often don't have enough to keep themselves occupied so they drink, do drugs, have sex, and are often up to no good. This was a stark-raving example of the ways a small town can hurt the people that live there. I didn't like it. I didn't enjoy it. I pushed through because it was pretty well written and I expected more since I had heard good things about the author.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Ocean State by Grove Press, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #netgalley #grovepress #oceanstate #stewartonan

This novel begins with a shocking statement: “When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.” The rest of the book focuses on the events leading to the murder (in the autumn of 2009 in a small coastal town in Rhode Island) and its repercussions.

The perspective of four women is given: Angel Oliviera is the accused; Carol is her mother; Marie is her younger sister; and Birdy is the victim. Angel has been in a relationship with Myles Parrish for three years when he secretly begins seeing Birdy. When two teenagers become intensely obsessed with the same guy, chaos is not unexpected.

The book can be described as a character study of these four women. Each emerges as a flawed, realistic character. Angel, for example, is beautiful, athletic, and popular; Marie describes her as “strong and confident with a wicked tongue.” Her weakness is being easy to anger. Angel’s fear is losing Myles who “was her first . . . her only.” She suspects she will lose Myles to some rich girl once he leaves for college the following year while she stays behind, working and attending community college part-time. In the meantime, she is desperate to hold on to him.

Carol is a divorced, single mother who works as a nurse’s aide in a seniors’ care facility. She struggles financially. She wants her daughters to have a better life and not repeat her mistakes, but her questionable choices do little to provide stability. She has a history of choosing unreliable men, two of whom she continues to see despite their tendency to violence. She often drinks to excess. Marie states her mother “was lonely and didn’t know what else to do.” It’s obvious that she is seeking excitement and romance, though financial stability also appeals. She acknowledges that she is self-absorbed and so has failed to see what’s been going on: “She’s been too busy, too caught up in Russ and Wes and trying to figure out the rest of her life to understand what was going on with Angel and Myles and this other girl.” Nonetheless, she supports Angel and tries to get her a good lawyer.

Birdy is a good girl who is close to her mother, though she changes once she becomes besotted with Myles. She starts sneaking around and lying; at one point, she wonders “if there’s anyone she won’t lie to.” Rather insecure, she falls for Myles’s charm and soon becomes desperate not to lose him to her rival.

Thirteen-year-old Marie is the opposite of her sister whom she idolizes. Despite Angel’s less than angelic behaviour towards her, Marie keeps her secrets. She thinks of herself as a nerd, someone who does well in school but has no real friends. She is kind-hearted but not perfect because she does act out. She is described as being “afraid of everything.” Often left at home alone, she spends her time over-eating.

In many ways, the book is about what people will do for love. Angel’s actions are extreme in this regard, but others also crave love and affection. Marie describes Carol as not being able to “stop wanting to be in love.” Birdy is willing to end a relationship with someone just so she can be with Myles. Marie thinks of herself as “the needy keeper of secrets”; wanting her sister’s love, she acknowledges inadvertently playing a role in events. In her closing monologue, Marie gives further details about what she has done because of love.

The title is perfect. Rhode Island is nicknamed the Ocean State so the title is a nod to the setting. However, it also refers to love. I thought of “Love is an Ocean” by Earth and Fire: “Love is an ocean always in motion/Endless and ever so deep.” And of course, love, like the ocean, is often stormy and unpredictable.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It caught my attention from the first sentence and kept it throughout.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley so quotations may not be as they appear in the final copy.

𝑾𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒂𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒏 𝒇𝒂𝒔𝒕, 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒎𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒔𝒐 𝒘𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒈𝒐 𝒐𝒏 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒏𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒍, 𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔.

A single mother who is more disaster than adult and two sisters who feel their mother is failing her obligations. Carol was duped by marrying Frank (her daughters’ father) and giving up any promise of her own bright future. For her girls, youngest Marie and eldest Angel, she dreams they will leave Ashaway, Rhode Island behind for college- one day. They won’t have to suffer a parade of useless boyfriends, struggling to make ends meet nor be trapped for ever in their grandparents crumbling old home. Her mother warned her not to marry Frank, and how is it possible that he is even worse now, eight years after their divorce, at being a functional adult? What sort of model of man is he for their girls? Getting into trouble, for things like assault, fighting at his age and unable to remain sober? What Carol hasn’t banked on is her daughter Angel loving a boy with a hunger so insatiable that she would kill for him, leaving the future scorched earth, while she herself was too tied up in her own relationship with boyfriend, Russ.

Marie is the younger sister (the good one), wanting nothing more than to bloom into fiery, popular Angel. Instead, she is cast into the role of observer, ruminating over everything that happens, longing away boring hours of her life, knowing it will never be her who is filled with ‘hidden currents of desire.’ That world is a mystery. She’s often left home alone, her mother on dates, her sister running around, at dances or work. The most interesting thing she can do is snack on food, sneak wine and snoop in her sister’s room. Some secrets, however, are incredibly dangerous. After Halloween weekend (Marie’s favorite holiday, yet a dud this year) news hits that a popular high school senior has disappeared, it is only a matter of time before Angel’s secrets come to light. Marie isn’t even aware of what she herself knows, after Angel is interviewed by the police, Marie realizes that while her sister is telling the truth, she is also lying. Their family is so good at deception. Everything falls apart fast.

Birdy is the victim, and the reader plunges into her decisions, her emotional struggles in falling for Angel’s boyfriend, Myles. It is also a story about class differences, the cost of self-worth, the longings of a young girl’s heart. It is about deception, misjudging people, and walking through the door to your own destruction. The naivete of youth, for victim and killers. Why do young girls put their trust in situations they have been warned about? Carol, Birdy, Angel- didn’t they all know better in a some part of their guts? I find it interesting the story begins with Carol’s own failure to make good choices.

Knowing from the start that Angel has helped kill her rival for her boyfriend’s affections, this isn’t so much a mystery or thriller, it’s more an explanation, if there ever can be one, for what could possibly drive a young, promising, popular girl to such a stupid, brutal act. Let’s not fail to notice Myles (spoiled, rich) and his role in using and abusing both Angel and Birdy. It’s a powerful thing to have girls at your disposal and it’s not really so shocking. Before you pin it all on him though, take heed, Angel isn’t the good one here either. Do you blame the teens for their eagerness? Despite being the eyes of the family, Marie is too young to fully comprehend what has befallen them. It’s painful for Marie admiring Angel, wishing to save her from what has already happened, wishing to know as much as she can through the news and crime shows because her big sister isn’t divulging anything. She cannot believe her sister capable of the facts she learns. They are all in the thick of it, and are forever tainted. Will they ever escape, like Carol always hoped? Marie’s decisions, in the end, are the most surprising but not in a drastic way. Life goes on, even after unforgiveable acts. Whose to blame? Really, is it the inattentive, disappointed parents? Stupid youth? Who knows. Stewart O’Nan did a wonderful job writing from the perspective of teenage girls, it was the heart of the story, remembering how both hungry and unsteady it is to be that age. Dark, sad, intelligent tale.

Publication Date: March 15, 2022

Grove Atlantic

Thank you to the author, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. I read this book compulsively in two sittings, and am still stewing over it. Narrated by various voices - although they are never explicitly identified, they are easily attributed - that are each compelling in their own way, the story revolves around a tragic love (or rather lust) triangle between two young women and a young man. Bad choices are made, trust is broken and jealousy triumphs until evil is done. The first sentence of the book precludes any mystery about who did what. The fascination lies in how everything happened to get to that point. This is the first book I have read by this author, but certainly will not be the last.

Overall, I like the story but teen girls are crazy. I think I wanted a little bit more to happen and the ending just snuck up on me, but I wasn’t really sure how I was supposed to feel or what I was supposed to have learned.

Ocean State really gives you the flavor of Rhode Island. Even though they are eating clams in Stonington Connecticut the mention of coffee cabinets is sooo Rhode Island. O’Nan creates a basic teenage love story with dire consequences. Nothing outlandish, no gritty details, just a finely crafted story about families and obsessive love and the effects on a family . It took me awhile to get into the story but once in, I could not put it down ! Thank you Grove Atlantic and #NetGalley #OceanState for the advanced reader copy.

I am giving this book 3.5 stars

Stewart O'Nan takes a risk with this book--not only announcing the murder and the murderer early in the book and allowing the story to evolve from there, but also trying (and largely succeeding) to make the killer a sympathetic character.

In working-class Ashaway, Rhode Island, two teenaged girls love the same boy, but while Angel has been his girlfriend for three years, Birdy is the "other woman," and not the first. Angel makes it clear that she will not tolerate any more straying.

Told largely from the points of view of Birdy and of Marie, Angel's little sister, the novel explores the impact of a tragedy on those who are left behind. It's hard for the reader to understand what about the boy, other than his beach house, inspires such obsession, but that's an eternal mystery of life.

I've been a fan of Stewart O'Nan since SNOW ANGELS, and his callout of Susan's Motel on Route 8 in Butler, PA. His books don't follow a pattern, and I'm not sure this book will ever be one of my favorites of his books, but it did pull me in, and I will remember it. And that's one goal of fiction. #OceanState #NetGalley

I'm sorry to say this book is not for me. I am finding it hard to connect with the characters - they don't seem authentic. It could be that a man writing teenage girls doesn't work. It doesn't work for me, at least not in this instance.

EXCERPT: When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl. She was in love, my mother said, like it was an excuse. She didn't know what she was doing. I had never been in love then, not really, so I didn't know what my mother meant, but I do now.

ABOUT 'OCEAN STATE': 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.

MY THOUGHTS: Teenage love (or is it hormones?) and the eternal love triangle - one boy, two girls - so it's not going to be pretty.

Ocean State dissects the passionate teenage relationships between three teenagers, focusing mainly on the two girls, Angel and Birdie, and their families. Myles hardly features at all, and I am unable to decide if he is immature and easily manipulated, flattered by the fact that he has two girls fighting over him, or if he is ultimately the manipulator. Marie, Angel's younger sister, is the observer, the chronicler of events.

Ocean State is the story of a murder, but it wouldn't be right to call it a mystery, because the killer's identity is established in the very first sentence.There is only the how and why to be determined, only the impact on the guilty and their families and the victims family to be worked through. There's no suspense, no twists and turns, just a story of obsession, jealousy, and a young woman who allows these emotions to override any modicum of common sense she may have had instilled by her mother and grandmother, causing her to act without giving any thought to the consequences.

It's a great read. It's compelling, complex and engaging. I flew through it in twenty four hours, but I am left with questions. Myles - he is a pivotal character and yet he is largely ignored. He didn't need to do the things that he did, but was he the manipulator or the manipulated? And what happened to him after he served his time? We know what happened to Angel.

And yes, Angel; did she ever feel any remorse, any guilt? Does she ever look back at that time and wonder what her life would have been like, if.....? Does she still think about Myles, or he about her? Do their paths ever cross again?

And I have not been able to put Marie out of my mind. Her sad life as a child, one that doesn't seem to be much better as an adult.

Nature? Or nuture? You can make up your own mind.

⭐⭐⭐.6

#OceanState #NetGalley

I: @stewart_onan1 @groveatlantic

T: @StewartOnan1 @stewartonan @GroveAtlantic

#comingofage #contemporaryfiction #crime #familydrama

THE AUTHOR: Stewart O'Nan is renowned for illuminating the unexpected grace of everyday life and the resilience of ordinary people with humor, intelligence, and compassion. (Amazon)

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Grove Atlantic via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Ocean State by Stewart O'Nan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

OCEAN STATE
BY: STEWART O'NAN

Stewart O'Nan happens to be one of my favorite Author's. He has written in his latest novel, "Ocean State," a deeply atmospheric and beautifully, yet disturbing novel about a murder committed by Angel who is a High School student. It is not a spoiler to disclose this because it is told to the reader in the first line in this richly well written novel. Angel and Birdy both love the same High school boy named Myles. Myles is cheating on Angel with Birdy and this results in a cruel and vicious crime. I thought that this novel was masterfully written by Stewart O'Nan because it had me so upset with Angel's jealousy of Birdy and all the blame gets put on Birdy and not Myles in Angel's mind. I was grateful that this was not a violent and sadistically graphic scene even though in my mind it was. I didn't like how Angel seemed to show no lack of remorse nor did her mother Carol try to teach her daughter that what she did was so wrong on so many levels.

Carol is a single mother who is raising two daughters, Angel and Marie on her own besides the girls sometimes being looked after by Carol's mother and the two girls grandmother. I didn't like Carol and thought that she didn't set a good example for her daughters by always bringing different men home by often changing boyfriend's as evidenced also early in the novel especially by Marie a thirteen year old. I think that part of Stewart O'Nan's brilliance is his ability to bring his characters fully to life so that he is able to evoke such strong emotions out of me thus making me so opinionated. Even though in Marie's voice she tells you in the first line of the novel that her sister once murdered a girl and their mother made excuses saying it happened because Angel was in love. Like that makes what happened okay.

I absolutely loved this stunning novel which is deeply atmospheric and in my mind a character study but it was also a page turner that once I started reading I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. The novel was short and the fact that Stewart O'Nan can pack so much in this quickly read book is a testament to his talent.

I met him at an Author event several years in a row and I must say that he is a kind and humble man. I would have a whole bag of books and he would personalize and inscribe them all with the patience of a Saint. This book is one of my favorites by him and it reminded me a little of his debut novel called "Snow Angels," which along with this one I highly, highly recommend. I am still thinking about this one and want to thank my Great friend Cheri for bringing my awareness that he had written a new novel. Unforgettable and Unique! I would give this one-hundred stars if I could because it is that compelling. It explores the relationships between sisters and also mothers and daughters so well.

I forgot to include that if you want to read a Brilliant and Stunning Chiller that is my top three best reading experiences with this Author, please consider picking up a physical copy of his book "The Night Country." I read it in the first decade in the 2000's and I guarantee you that it will haunt you and I am sorry to say that it isn't available on Kindle but so worth the effort of reading the physical copy. I remember it still a decade later and it is said in the synopsis on Amazon that it is a ghost story. I don't remember that vibe but it is a quick, but Unforgettable read and I hope that I still have the signed, First Edition, First printing, which I hope that I didn't donate when I did a great purge of my collection several years ago. My husband and my oldest son were complaining that I had too many books in the house, resulting in many valuable books by Authors whom I love got placed by the truckload filling those donation bins to full capacity all over my surrounding towns. I pray that I still have my copy of "The Night Country," because it is easily in the top five best Literary thriller's that I have ever read in my life. For all of you who prefer reading on Kindle If you just read one physical copy, please consider this one. I guarantee that "The Night Country," is unlike any book that you have ever read before. It ticks all of the boxes and it will leave you reeling with a serious book hang over. My huge let down after reading "Ocean State," was that I went hunting on Amazon looking for another Stewart O'Nan fix or something like "Ocean State," and it jogged my memory that I had forgotten all about "The Night Country," and was wanting to purchase the Kindle copy when to my disappointment it isn't available on Kindle. I just noticed that and I am going to write to the Publisher inquiring why it isn't included for digital sales like most, but not all of Stewart O'Nan's books are. I am going to have to do some digging as too find my black and rust colored dust jacket in hardcover is still in my possession. It does take place over two consecutive Halloween nights in two consecutive years and it will appeal to both the male and female audiences. In that way it differs from "Ocean State," which I think females will relate to it more. Just a little book trivia: I had Cormac McCarthy's signed First Edition, First Printing of "The Road," and an uncorrected proof Reviewer's copy of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," both in Very Fine Condition as Antiquarian Rare Booksellers would state them to be as New among many others that got purged from my Collection. I am off to see if I still have "The Night County," and if not I will purchase it no matter how much it costs, as a signed, First Edition, First Printing because that's how much that book means to me. I did keep Ernest Hemingway's First Edition, First Printing of his "The Old Man and the Sea," and a few others. I apologize for the rant but my point is if you just forgo the Kindle option and buy only one physical book this year, please consider Stewart O'Nan's masterpiece IMHO, "The Night Country." That is after you first read his newest and harrowing "Ocean State,"

Publication Date: March 15th, 2022

A huge Thank you and full gratitude to Net Galley, Stewart O'Nan, my wonderful friend Cheri and Grove Atlantic-Grove Press for providing me with my ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#OceanState #StewartO'Nan #GroveAtlanticGrovePress #NetGalley

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The book is very well written but I couldn’t relate to the angst of teenage love and jealousy. I guess I’m too old.

Having long been a fan of Stewart O’Nan, I was eager to read Ocean State. Having spent 64 of my 68 years in Connecticut I am very familiar with the setting and population of coastal Rhode Island. The first sentence pulled me in and set the stage for the powerful writing within these 240 pages. I met Angel and Marie and their mother, Carol, and immediately fell under their spell. Carol has been fighting her own demons for so long with at least two bad habits, picking the wrong men and drinking to excess. Angel is quickly following in Carol’s shoes. The most interesting for me was Marie. I wanted to take her home and give her the love and attention she was seeking but never receiving. Her confusion was so obvious the night she soaped her mother’s car.
The power of this read is in the dynamics of the women, including Birdie. They each narrate the story through their own eyes. We are privy to their thoughts and feelings which evoke personal connections. Loved these characters.
Many many thanks to Stewart O’Nan, At.antic Monthly Press, and NetGalley for affording me the pleasure of reading an arc of this book, to be published tomorrow, March 15th.

Stewart O’Nan is one of my favourite authors, consistently crafting moving, compelling stories—little worlds, really. This one has some thematic overlap with one of his previous books, Songs for the Missing—both depict the impacts on a younger girl when Something Bad happens to her older sister—but that earlier book had a much deeper emotional resonance, for this reader at least. Ocean State aims to solve a mystery, but not in the usual murder mystery way, because we know what happened from the first sentence: “When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.” The book explores why that happened, though perhaps the reason it fell a bit short for me was because the answer seems to be largely teenage-brain-itis. Create a teenage relationship—rich, handsome BMOC and pretty, popular girl from the wrong side of the tracks—have the boyfriend secretly stray with another girl, throw in their uncovering on social media and the subsequent shaming (only of the girl, of course, the “other woman”), and build a rage inside the original girlfriend. Recipe for disaster. But it just never really cohered for me. I think O’Nan tries to lay out the background to help us understand what created circumstances that led to a girl’s death. Events unfold in a working class Rhode Island town. The two sisters live with their divorced mom, who works a low-income job and struggles to provide, moving hopefully from one bad boyfriend to the next. The older sister is a high school senior without prospects, who worries that her three-year high school relationship will very likely end when her boyfriend goes to college the following year. It’s fairly clear that her murderous rage at the girl who tries to steal her boyfriend is less about love than status. This is a place where women hope to better their life by marrying up (the girls’ mother sets that sad example). Anyway, I get what led up to the death, I just found the characters all very unappealing, the mother, both sisters, especially the creep boyfriend. The only character I liked at all, however exasperatedly (that teenage brain thing again) was the girl you know ends up dead from the very outset.

In Ocean State we know from the beginning that a high school student is murdered. Narrated by four women prior to and after the murder, the story unfolds. Intense love, jealousy, hope and hopelessness rip through the pages. Ocean State is a compelling read.

I found this to be an ok, strait-forward read. The descriptions of the characters were outstanding and their actions were infuriating. There are a lot of discussion topics in this which book clubs could discuss at length. I liked that there were four different narrators, giving us different perspectives of the very complicated situation. I was hoping for a little bit more suspense and some more”wow” moments, but overall this was pretty not bad and will appeal to a broad audience looking for something a little different in the fiction genre.

Not Who Did It But Why


Ocean State, the powerful new novel from the prolific Stewart O’Nan, is no who-done-it. The novel’s first sentence tells us that: “When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl. She was in love, my mother said, like it was an excuse.” This is the voice of Marie, one of four female narrators, but the one who begins and ends the novel and puts everything together. Marie doesn’t talk much, “afraid of making things worse.” Instead, she watches “like a scorekeeper,” noticing “every slight and insult, every failure to be kind.” Marie just wants “everyone to be happy, despite our actual lives.”

The setting is Ashaway, a small Rhode island coastal town, perfectly named since it’s 2009 and the economy has tanked, the mill that once kept the town going now shuttered and padlocked against trespassers. O’Nan has long been a keen observer of working class life, especially of its women, and the residents of Ashaway are no exception. O’Nan has a deep understanding of these women, single mothers like Carol, Marie’s mother, always struggling to pay the bills, struggling to find a little personal happiness, maybe drinking too much, maybe making poor choices where men are concerned. Carol, who works in a nursing home, would like to provide more for her daughters, but, “As someone whose dreams didn’t work out, she sees the future as beyond her control, their lives at the mercy of chance, even if they do everything right.”

And of course, they don’t do everything right. Carol doesn’t notice how obsessed her daughter Angel, a high school senior, is with her boyfriend Myles, also a senior, handsome, wealthy and not overly bright. Angel is popular, beautiful and athletic—a volleyball star—but she correctly perceives that Myles is all she has and that she may not have him for long. He’ll be going off to college, while she’ll be staying in Ashaway, working at CVS and going to community college. Perhaps it’s this sense of hopelessness that triggers her rage when Myles cheats on her with Birdy, also pretty and athletic, but smarter and less popular, who, if she can keep from getting knocked up like her older sister, might have a brighter future. Women have been blaming other women for men’s cheating since the beginning of recorded history, and the cheating men, like spineless Myles, are only too happy to encourage this misperception.

It’s all ripe for tragedy, and the tragedy feels inevitable. O’Nan is a master at character development and the women in this novel are fully individuated characters for whom we feel the utmost empathy. Even Angel. Especially Angel. Ocean State is beautifully written and I could not put it down. My only quibble is with the novel’s final resolution, which I won’t give away. I’m grateful to Net Galley for giving me a chance to read and review this book.

This title is not for me. It feels like YA fiction so I think there are plenty of readers out there who will enjoy this very straight forward family drama. The teen voices feel accurate and sympathetic but the plot is very basic and laid out up front.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy, all thoughts are my own!

I enjoyed this! I think it took quite a while to get to the “meat” of the story, but I was intrigued enough to keep going to find out what happened. I would definitely pick up another book by this author! A solid 4 stars!

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. Fascinating… A beautiful story that captures your attention and your heart from beginning to end.

There is no mystery about who committed the murder of working class teenager Birdy, rival of fellow working class teen Angel's for wealthy classmate Myles' love and attention. In Ocean State, gifted author Stewart O'Nan gives us an exquisitely written and heartbreaking character study of teenage jealousy spun out of control. Told through varying voices - Angel's as well as those of her mother Carol, her sister Marie, who also sets the scene at the start of the novel and wraps it up at the end, and Birdy - this is a heart-breaking story of young love, jealousy, family, the role of social media, economic and class differences, and self-discoveries, told sparely and poetically. In fewer than 250 pages O'Nan achieves what others have attempted in nearly twice as many. Bravo!