Ocean State

By Stewart O'Nan

When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.

For the Oliviera family - mum Carol, daughters Angel and Marie - autumn 2009 in the once-prosperous beach town of Ashaway, Rhode Island is the worst of times. Money is tight, Carol can't stay away from unsuitable men, Angel's world is shattered when she learns her long-time boyfriend Myles has been cheating on her with classmate Birdy, and Marie is left to fend for herself. As Angel and Birdy, both consumed by the intensity of their feelings for Myles, careen towards a collision both tragic and inevitable, the loyalties of Carol and Marie will be tested in ways they could never have foreseen.

Stewart O'Nan's expert hand has crafted a crushing and propulsive novel about sisters, mothers and daughters, and the desperate ecstasies of love and the terrible things we do for it. Both swoony and haunting, Ocean State is a masterful work by one of the great storytellers of everyday American life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press UK
• Release date: May 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781611858785

Stewart O'Nan

Stewart O’Nan’s award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, A Prayer for the Dying, Last Night at the Lobster, and Emily, Alone. His novel The Odds was hailed by The Boston Globe as “a gorgeous fable, a stunning meditation and a hope-filled Valentine.” Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists. He was born and raised and lives in Pittsburgh. 

Reviews for Ocean State

[dianekeenoy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Stewart O'Nan and always pre-order his books! I listened to this on audio for about the first two thirds since I was in the car all day driving my little Havanese to the vet for an emergency visit. It grabbed my interest right away and kept me and my pup absorbed by the story during our drive. By the time we got home after supper, I had to finish so grabbed my book and read the rest of the book! This is a love triangle between teenagers and you just want to tell them to calm down and not do anything too hasty. The parents certainly weren't paying any attention at all as this teen angst is going down. This is a short book but packs a huge emotional punch!

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have always loved books written by Stewart O'Nan. This one didn't resonate with me as much as many of his others, perhaps because of the subject matter. O'Nan writes convincingly in the voices of teenage girls, which is an accomplishment; however, the weakness of both Myles and Birdie are so very sad. This story is reminiscent of the killing of a girl by an Air Force Academy cadet and his high school girlfriend at the Naval Academy. The girls were rival for the boy's attentions, and soon the boy was convinced to assist in the killing of the girl as directed by her rival. What a total senseless waste of three lives, just as in this O'Nan book. I will continue to read anything written by this very talented author.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ocean State, Stewart O’Nan, author; Sara Young, narratorThree families are on a collision course to disaster . A group of teenagers, about to graduate, make foolish decisions that ruin their lives and alter their futures. Was it puppy love gone awry, jealousy that was all consuming? What bred the tragic circumstances these families had to face?Two girls love the same boy. He, Myles, is somewhat of a philanderer. When his girlfriend of three years, Angel, discovers his infidelity, she is furious and attacks the girl, Birdy, with whom he has cheated. When Birdy persists in stalking him, both of them conspire to make her pay, even though he has been a willing participant in their “affair”. Perhaps to prove his love for Angel, he feels he must help her retaliate. None of these young adults seem to consider the consequences of their behavior or to really care about what might result. They break rules, casually hurt others, and show no appropriate remorse, so bent are they are on satisfying their own needs. Their uncontrolled passion destroys them.Their families are economically diverse, and like all families, they experience growing pains from divorce, absent parents, grief, sibling rivalry, eccentric relatives and other struggles. Each of the families will suffer a profound loss, each will lose a child, but only one will lose a child forever.What would cause such a lack of respect for human life? What would cause such desire, jealousy and fury that could drive a person to commit so heinous an act, as murder? Can it simply be attributed to their youth or their immaturity. Was it a lack of guidance or appropriate examples of behavior or neglect that was responsible for the irrational acts of these teens? Their goals were so unrealistic.The families involved, immediate and extended, did not seem to be aware of what these children were doing or how they were suffering. They were so needy, but their needs were unmet and undisclosed to those that loved them. Each lived in their own selfish world, parent and child. Although, the adults were often poor examples of behavior, these teens were old enough to know better. Their infractions went unobserved or were ignored by those that could have guided them. Instead, their transgressions were just accepted as the normal wayward ways of youth, until they were not, until they went too far. Sometimes, the innocent paid the greater price for the crimes of those guilty. How far would a family member go to protect their loved one? How far should they go? Would the guilty do what was right, confess and repent, or would they save themselves and sacrifice each other? What is the appropriate punishment? How do their sins affect the other family members? Who is scarred more deeply? Does the legal system handle criminal charges equally for those incarcerated? Has parenting become a forgotten skill as self-satisfaction seems to take precedent in the lives of many of us? This brief novel asks all of these questions and more.

[juliestielstra · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Like many others here, I've really liked several of O'Nan's previous novels. This one left me unsatisfied, disappointed, and a little irritated that I'd slogged through it, hoping something better was to come.Maybe it's been too many years since I was a teenaged girl, or maybe it's because O'Nan - who can write wonderfully about aging - isn't and never has been a teenaged girl, though I presume he must know a few. But somehow, the three girls around whom the story revolves never came alive. In fact, sometimes I lost track of who was narrating, or who the voice was on the page I was reading. His choice to shift his narration in different passages from past tense to present, from first to third person - and back again - didn't help. If we're going to be subjected to two girls' obsessive passion for a particular young man, it would help for us to understand "why him?" The male characters are remote, nearly blank, so there's very little for the spewing emotions of the women to engage with. I was just left feeling fatigued and a bit bored.The nod to To Kill a Mockingbird is clear - even the opening line echoes it, from the memory of a younger sibling reflecting on a dire year of her youth. There's a neat tying-up of loose ends at the finish, and people have moved on into mostly stable, settled adult lives - including the murderer. O'Nan seems to have gotten a bit lazy about evoking place - lists of businesses the characters drive past, mostly. His eye for details like stray grains of salt on orange formica tabletops or a list of food ingredients for a party spread is too small in scale to build an environment or a family culture. While intended to reflect Marie's point of view, the depiction of a girl with Down syndrome as obese, smelly, dull-witted, and with an Elmer-Fudd speech impediment is pretty unpleasant.Which is about how I score this novel - pretty unpleasant, and lacking sufficient authenticity to engage this reader.

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't remember why I wanted to read this book and it was a huge disappointment. The characters were flat and the plot was surprisinglly dull.

[katiekrug · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As I said elsewhere on social media, Stewart O'Nan could write a phone book and I would read it. I am a longtime fan of his fiction* and anyone who visits my thread regularly knows of my great love for his novella, Last Night at the Lobster which I re-read every holiday season.In Ocean State, O'Nan begins at the end with the acknowledgment of a murder. The story is told from a few different viewpoints - that of Carol, a single mother; her daughters, Marie and Angel; and a local teenage girl, Birdy. There is a boy involved in this story, and it is him - Myles - that I found to be the weakest link. He was sort of inscrutable to me and the least developed main character. But he was essential to the story, and so this felt off. Even so, O'Nan tells a compelling tale of teen love and angst, the pain of growing up and feeling misunderstood, the push and pull of families with little more than love and familiarity to keep them going. As usual, he uses small details to illuminate whole worlds, and his characters feel very real.I have yet to read a novel by O'Nan that I didn't at least very much like, and this is no exception, even if it's not among my favorites.4 stars* He also has written a couple of non-fiction books - The Circus Fire which I am in the minority in thinking was not very good and rather boring; and a book, co-written with Stephen King, about their love of the Boston Red Sox which obviously makes it unreadable to me.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel begins with the ending; a girl talking about how her sister went to prison for her part in the murder of a teenage girl. From there, O'Nan returns to the beginning, telling the story from the point-of-view of the younger sister and of the murdered girl. O'Nan's a good enough writer to take all of the tension out of the story from the first page and still write a well-paced novel, although I think that the novels he writes that are based on issues are less strong or memorable than the novels he writes about family dynamics. This novel manages to address economic disparity and he writes beautifully of living in a run-down rental on the outskirts of a town divided between the wealthy people with ocean view homes and those who service their needs. But this novel lacks the depth of his quieter novels, like Wish You Were Here or the perfection of Last Night at the Lobster. It's still an excellent, well-crafted novel, just not one of O'Nan's best, but then his best novels are extraordinary.

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sheer disappointment, as I have loved most of his earlier novels. Gets a half point for the Rhode Island setting, but the tired trope of high school rich boy toys with poor girl and poorer girl plot has been done frequently and better.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

OCEAN STATE is my tenth Stewart O'Nan book, but I think he's written nearly twice that many by now. I can't keep up with the guy. All of his books are very different, but no matter what the subject, he somehow manages to immerse himself into it; he BECOMES his characters. They are that believable, that real. And he does that again in OCEAN STATE. Tnis time he is four different women. Or maybe I should say one woman, three girls. Or maybe not.The story happens mostly in 2009, the year the Yankees and the Phillies squared off in the World Series, which forms a loose backdrop for the story, set in Rhode Island, of course, in a dying mill town of blue collar types. The four principals are: a fading forty-something divorced mom, Carol, who works a low-paying job as a nurse in a nursing home; her two daughters - tall, beautiful, athletic (volleyball), popular Angel,18; and Marie, 13 and smart, plump and unpopular. That's only three, I know. The fourth is Beatriz, or 'Birdie,' 18 and short, cute, also athletic (soccer), who runs in a different clique, of mostly Portuguese- American kids. Both Angel and Birdie have steadies (Myles and Hector, respectively). But Myles, a very handsome rich kid (and something of an entitled prick), is also carrying on a secret thing with Birdie. Got that? And when I say 'thing,' I mean mostly sex, because these kids do have sex, all the usual varieties, and lots of it. But all the romantic feelings, envy and jealousy are in there too. I mean, you know, TEENagers. So, Birdie breaks up with Hector. Then Angel finds out about Myles and Birdie, and she is furious. I mean "Hell hath no fury" and all that. And there is all kinds of driving up and down the roads between all these little bitty RI coastal towns, so you get to know all the stores and businesses and hear all the latest hits. The local ambience is laid on so well that I almost felt like I could've found my own way to Myles's folks' beach house where so much of the sex was taking place. (Other places too, of course - in cars, Angel's room, a cemetery, etc.)Oh, and there's a murder in here too, but you know that - and who did it - from the very first page. The first sentence, in fact. The story is told from four viewpoints, kinda - those four women I named. But it is thirteen year-old Marie who anchors it all, with her first person narrative that opens the novel and appears sporadically throughout, then supplies the epilogue, looking back from years later. Very much like Harper Lee's Scout from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, which, not so surprisingly, Marie is reading during the most important events depicted here - a school assignment. She loves the book, and identifies closely with Scout too.But perhaps one of the most important elements of all to this story is the cell phone. The two older girls here are absolutely attached (addicted?) to their phones and to social networking. Their lives rise and fall by these ubiquitous devices. I'm old, so, while I know these awful, disturbing, constant connections in the lives of young people today do exist, I find it to be creepy, horrifying and just, well, sad. So was I creeped out by this book, wit all the sex, the phones? Yeah, kinda (but mostly it was the phones). And yet, once again, O'Nan has so thoroughly "inhabited" these characters - and WOMEN this time! - that I could not stop turning the pages until I got to the end. Creepy, yeah, but Geeze you're good, Stewart. My very highest recommendation.P.S. High school kids would/will love this book, but I don't think their parents would/will want them to read it. Just sayin'.- Tim Bazzett author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER