Ocean State

by Stewart O'Nan

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.

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.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Thriller, Crime, Contemporary

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2022

About the author

Stewart O'Nan is the author of eighteen novels, including Emily, Alone; Last Night at the Lobster; A Prayer for the Dying; Snow Angels; and the forthcoming Ocean State, due out from Grove/Atlantic on March 8th, 2022.

With Stephen King, I’ve also co-written Faithful, a nonfiction account of the 2004 Boston Red Sox, and the e-story “A Face in the Crowd.”

You can catch me at stewart-onan.com, on Twitter @stewartonan and on Facebook @stewartONanAuthor

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review soon ....I would give this book 10 stars if I could!!!!!! I highly recommend Book Clubs choose this.
Personally -- I could have a discussion about things written on 'every' page!!!

REVIEW:

NO SPOILERS….(long…but spoiler-free)
“OCEAN STATE” is now one OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS!!!

From beginning to end “Ocean State” is woven together brilliantly.
It would make an excellent book club choice.
It’s both animated and subtle in scope and touches on many poignant themes:
….. unpredictable environments within a family,
the influence from family history,
unhealthy parenting,
sisters,
mothers,
family breakdowns - but also good loving people
small town living,
stress,
lies,
over-eating,
risky behaviors,
childhood neglect,
guilt & compensating for guilt,
single-parenting mom juggling work, dating, and structured routines for her daughters,
self-esteem,
murder, (the undergoing scrutiny of why, and suspense)
alcoholism and drugs,
financial problems,
individual internal struggles,
lack of support,
unhealthy attachments,
the effects of divorce and boyfriends,
ineffective communications,
family comparisons,
excessive criticism,
conditions for feeling loved,
difficulty trusting,
rejection,
jealousy,
envy,
sexuality,
secrets,
High School intensity- triangle relationship,
romantic teenage relationship,
obsession,
unhealthy male influences,
worthiness,
rebellious,
disorder,
an exploration of circumstances beyond one’s control,
love, loss, coming of age, tragedy, and beauty.

“Ocean State” is polished and eloquently written. It’s a 240 page-turning literary-enigma novel…
but it’s worth pausing to re-read scenes- even transitional scenes — to reflect, observe closely, and deepen our understanding of the emotional state of each character.
It’s the characters that make this plot so good…which contributes to the many thought-provoking themes.

I related to the overall experience. Having been the younger- left home alone -much too often- sister, to my older taller gorgeous sister, with a distracted single mother — other than a ‘murder’ — I directly understood the dealings of their small-family dynamics.

I hope I haven’t come off too cerebral about this book — (it’s not easy for me to write a review that I’m soooo very passionate about —- I LOVED IT. It was exactly the type of book I love best —smart, reflective, character & relationship connected - The beauty and extraordinary's of the ordinaries….(flawed and real)
And
I soooo admire Stewart O’Nan’s skills…(wishing him many congrats on this exceptional novel)…
Thank you our publisher: Grove Atlantic, and Netgalley ….for the great gift to read this book early.
It will be released March 15, 2022

The rest of this (forgive me for being overly long), are a few excerpts that spoke to me…

Ashaway, Rhode Island, outside Westerly, down along the shore……
“Nothing had happened yet. Later the police would put dates to everything, but for now we were two girls alone in a house on a Friday night with nowhere to go. We made popcorn and snuggled under an Afghan on the couch with the lights out and watch ‘Mystic Pizza’, One of my mother’s favorites, trading the bowl back-and-forth, our feet in each other’s laps. She was Julia Roberts, I was Lily Taylor. It didn’t matter that half the time she was on the phone. We didn’t have to speak. All I wanted was to be close to her like this, the two of us laughing at the same places. She was the only one who knew what we’d both been through, and I liked to think we were inseparable, bound by more than just blood. We weren’t happy that fall, in that rotting, underwater house, with everything we’d already lost, and everything still to come, but lying safe and warm under my grandmother‘s afghan, eating popcorn and stealing glasses at my funny, beautiful sister as the light played over our face, I wished we could stay there forever”.

Carol doesn’t want her girls to have to take care of her.
“She wants them to get out of Ashaway and have families at their own, but exactly how that will happen she can’t imagine. Angel has her looks but her temper too. Marie’s bright but afraid of everything, which Carol thinks is partly her fault and partly Frank’s. The plan for now is to get them through high school and help them as much as they can with college, which in her case seems more and more impossible, unless something big changes. As someone whose dreams didn’t work out, she sees the future as beyond her control, random, their lives at the mercy of chance, even if they do everything right”.

“She was telling the truth and she was lying at the same time, minimizing, the way I lied to my mother about my eating, the way my mother lied to me when she didn’t think something was my business, like her drinking, or my father. We were all good at covering up things”.

5 very strong stars… Highly recommend it.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a quick page turner. It’s the Teen angst gone savage. You know, boy cheats on girl then girl gets jealous and plots for them to murder girl.
A little dramatic for me and not sure what the author set out to accomplish. I was waiting for it and hoped to find it, but didn’t. Just seemed like the author could have gone deeper. This one just seemed to skim the surface. Not one I will remember. 3⭐️

[Sandysbookaday (on indefinite hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...

[JanB · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Stewart O’Nan, having loved every book of his that I’ve read.

I often ask myself when I finish a literary fiction book: what was the author’s purpose and did he/she accomplish it?

In this case I’m not sure. This is a well-written book, as you would expect of the author, but the subject matter involves a love triangle, sexual trysts, angst, and drama leading to murder among teenagers who themselves are the product of parents who struggle with their own demons.

This is not a mystery/thriller, but literary fiction, with a focus on the exploration of teenagers growing up in dysfunction, leading to a tragedy. Nothing new here, and a distasteful storyline. Which leads me back to the question of the author’s purpose in writing this story. I'm not convinced the author brought anything new to the table. Maybe I missed something? While I love the author’s writing, this story left me cold.

I’m still a fan of the author's even though this one didn't work for me, and look forward to his next book.

*I received a digital audio ARC for review from NetGalley. All opinions are my own
*available now

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

’When I was in eight 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 didn’t know what my mother meant, but I do now.’

Set in Ashaway, Rhode Island, this story explores the events that led to the murder of Birdy Alves, through text messages sent back and forth between two teens, Angel and Myles, the thoughts of Carol, Angels’ mother, as well as Birdy. The stories whispered in the hallways of the school. But Marie, Angel’s sister, seems to weave each of these stories together as the story progresses.

As this begins, Angel and Marie live with their mother, their parents divorced. Their father is more of a background figure, at least until everything begins to unravel.

A story of the ugly nature of jealousy, the desperation of a person who can’t seem to choose, declaring their love or affection for one over the other, sharing the same declaration of love with each, hoping he can somehow continue the charade. The unraveling of lives in the aftermath. The desperation of a mother wanting the best for herself and for her daughters, and yet needing a life of her own, as well. A story of all that, and so much more.

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.

This is the first of O’Nan’s books I’ve read, so I can’t compare it to any of his others. O’Nan’s writing kept me reading this devastating story that, thankfully, avoids the graphic details of the victim’s death, focusing instead on the lives involved, the aftermath for the sisters, the mothers, and the destructive nature of jealousy.


Published: 15 Mar 2022

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic / Grove Press

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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."

That first line hooked me instantly. 😍

This is the story of a love triangle gone wrong. Myles and Angel have dated for three years. They are athletic, popular, and beautiful. The envy of their high school.

Birdy on the other hand is a petite brunette, the exact opposite of Angel, and often overlooked until Myles pays her attention. From here they start a relationship unbeknownst to anyone else until they are found out.

Neither Angel or Birdie want to give him up until one of them gets killed. A choice has been made but in the end who proves to be the winner? Sadly, no one does.

The story is narrated by Angel, her little sister Marie, their mother Carol, and Birdie. All perspectives are compelling. Carol, the single mother with a taste for drink and men trying to do what's best for her daughters. Marie, the chubby daughter and bookworm puts Angel on a pedestal. She would do anything to be like her. Birdie, the nice girl. The one no one would ever say a bad word about until pictures leak of her and Myles together. And Angel, of course, who is loyal to a fault for Myles and whose jealousy gets the better of her in the end.

There is no great mystery to solve here. There are no twists and turns. What we have here is some literary fiction at it's finest. I worried briefly that this may be too YA for me but this reads very much like an adult novel. You know who dies and you know who killed them but what is fascinating was everything that happened to bring us to this conclusion. I honestly read this book in two big gulps and I was left extremely satisfied. My first Stewart O'Nan but it will not be last. Several of my friends have enjoyed his previous endeavor Last Night at the Lobster and I am going to get my hands on a copy of that in 2022. Highly recommend! 4 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for my complimentary copy.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unexpected from this author, very different from other books he has written, at least of those I have read. A book that starts off with a young teen, Marie, stating that her sister has murdered someone. From this starting point, the author, takes us into the lives of three young women and one young man. Using the voices of these two women, p!us ones mother and the young sister Marie, who is a keen observer, we learn exactly what happened and why.

A male author writing as a man could prove difficult, but I think the author nailed the lives of teenaged girls. A time where everything seems larger than life, important and dramatic. Also, as one with a slightly younger sister, the curiousness, nosiness, and insights of said sister. A mother's guilt and protectiveness. This is in my opinion, real life written as fiction The story, the lives of all these characters pulled me in and the wonderful narration enhanced the experience.

[Ceecee · Rating 3 out of 5]

'In eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl', thus starts Stewart O'Nan's latest book. So,there's no mystery here, we know from the off that Angel kills Birdy (Beatrix) Alves in 2009 with boyfriend Myles Parrish in Rhode Island, the Ocean State. Written from the perspectives of Angel, her mother Carol, Birdy and as a retrospective by Angel's sister Marie. The novel examines the build up and impact of the events of the doomed autumn, of a love triangle that goes horribly wrong.

First of all, there are a number of things to praise in the storytelling. It is without doubt well written and the teen dynamics are good with the deception and duplicity. The interactions between all the teens in the story feel authentic. You get a strong sense of the household of Carol, Angel and Marie, the sisterly bond and of Marie trailing in Angel's wake and you also get a good sense of the Portugese household of Birdy. There are parts of the novel where you get the intensity of the teenage feelings and there are some fleeting moments of tension. The setting in the Ocean State is very good and provides an atmospheric backdrop.

However, although I can see it's good, it just doesn't resonate with me and I think it's just too YA for me. The constant switching of narrative gets annoying and you don't 'see' the teens in any great depth. As a consequence of knowing the outcome there are few shocks or surprises and it just doesn't wow me. There is no particular rationale for Angel's and Myles' actions against Birdy - jealousy? Please, that's any every day (every hour!) teen emotion and in my view it's not sufficient for the drastic action. The character of Myles is a puzzle he's central and yet his attractions are a mystery! I don't see it, except that he's rich and has a nice car. Maybe that's enough for a teen! The sentence that Birdy receives is way too light. As for the ending, way too many loose ends for me. It's all too glossed over though I do think the impact on Marie is done well.

Overall, I have very mixed feelings about this one - I like it but I don't love it.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Atlantic Books, Grove Press for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook and thought the narrator did a great job. This was a easy, quick, straight to the point story. I liked it.

In a town in Rhode Island, a high school student is murdered. You quickly find out who did it and why. Told in alternating POV’s, we learn about Carol the mother of two daughters; Angel, the murder, and her younger sister Marie.

Marie’s testimony is recounted who explains what unfolded in Autumn of 2009. In a nutshell, Angel and another girl Birdy are in love with the same boy. This book shows what can happen when both girls collide.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

[Marialyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

One has to know the mind of a teen in order to have written this story. The people within the pages are those that explore relationships, those of mothers and daughters, those of sisters, those of friends, and tragiclly those that involve love and its lack of relationships that provides the continuum of this tale.

At the beginning, we learn of a young teenager being murdered, and as the story progresses, we learn of the circumstances, the background of the families, and the area in which they live. It is a story of rich versus poor, the have versus the have nots, jealousy and the repercussions of what can and does happen when that tug between the emotions boils up under the surface and comes to fruition.

The story is mainly about four girls. We learn early that Angel is the murderer, Carol is Angel's mother, and Birdy the murdered victim. Marie is the youngest of Angel's sister and from her we get a retrospective on the before and after effects of this murder. Carol is divorced and we don't hear much of her former husband although he is present after the homicide.

Both Birdy and Angel love the same boy, Myles and while Myles encourages both girls, the intensity of their jealousy and eventually hatred of one another build up to the point of the murder of Birdy and Angel being arrested. If you know the psyche of teenage girls, you recognize the seizing desire and turmoil rolling over the girls.

This is also a story about the search for love, for acceptance, for the ability of knowing when someone is being used. Will the young Birdy be held responsible, and the social communications that may be the final stone in Angel's grave be the key to Birdy's obsession? We all remember those emotions that as teens we were ill equipped to control. The lack of parental oversight often lends to problems and exacerbates it.

This was certainly an intense story that flows together to a momentous conclusion in which it seems as if no one wins.

Thank you to Stewart O'Nan, Dreamscape Media, and NetGalley for the audio book of this story due out on March 15, 2022

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Stewart O’Nan publishes a new book, I do whatever I can to drop everything and immerse myself in it for a couple of days. Ocean State is no exception. I was hooked from the very first sentence and blew off a work assignment for another day because I couldn’t tear myself away.

Not unlike some of his other novels – Emily, Alone, for example, or Last Night at the Lobster – Ocean State digs deep into everyday people who are slowly suffocating in working class America. Set in coastal blue-collar Rhode Island, it centers mostly on Angel and Birdy and the teenage boy they both are obsessively in love with, along with Angel’s mother Carol and younger sister Marie.

Like an ocean, the currents that move these women have far-reaching effects. We know from the first line that Angel helped murder Birdy because she was in love and didn’t know what she was doing. This is not a “whodunnit” as much as a deep dive into what drove her to do it. Using ocean parlance, the answers are right beneath the surface.

The mother Carol has a long history of choosing unreliable men. Stuck as a nurse’s aide while she singlehandedly raises her daughters, she pins her hopes on an older man, Russ, who may just be the ticket to a better life. Angel is a chip off the old block. Willowy, golden-haired and misdirected, she has spent her high school years with Myles, a good-looking and popular teen who is on a track to college while her own track forward seems dead-ended. For now, she’s holding on to him for dear life even though he’s a known flirt. When he begins a tryst with Birdy – who has more in common with her than she thinks – her insecurities and jealousies reach a boiling point.

All this is observed by her younger sister, Marie, who is nowhere as glamorous as her older sister and whose understanding is skewed by her age and her inexperience with the feelings engendered by teenage love. But is it indeed love that fueled this tragedy? The author suggests that blind love alone is not an excuse; rather, it’s a combination of class-based roadblocks, social media overkill, and insecurities.

Ocean State is not for readers who are seeking splashy courtroom drama or air-tight answers. Rather, it is a incisive look at women who live hard lives when the wrong man with the right words seems like a form of deliverance. Read the final chapters carefully: there may be more to this story than meets the eye. My profound thanks to Grove Atlantic for allowing me to become an early reader in exchange for an honest review.

[Kelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

This felt like YA to me. There, I said it. It took me forever to get through this audio and I took it out more than once. Though I enjoyed the locale, this was not for me. 2 stars

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stewart O'Nan subverts the mystery paradigm by giving up the crime—and the criminal—in the book's opening line, and the motive soon after. He chooses instead to create tension around the characters, alternating the story between the victim's and (one of) the killer's perspectives, as well as a mother and sister, creating empathy for these women and their bleak lives. The murder and its aftermath occur in the book's latter third, draining the tension into one long-ish epilogue that deflates slowly, like a tired balloon the morning after an awkward surprise party. At the end of the day, this is misplaced as crime fiction. It's an American tragedy, albeit more Maury Povich than Shakespeare.

The setting is a rundown former mill town in Rhode Island. With its female cast, Atlantic Coast blue collar ambience, ethnic Portuguese color, and coming-of-age love triangle, it feels like a noir, humorless "Mystic Pizza". O'Nan tracks the quotidian lives of his two main characters—lovestruck, doomed Birdy and the cuckolded Angel—as they play out their drama vying for the same boy, the privileged and dick-brained Myles. He is articulate and compelling in his portrayal of these everyday lives and their inherent angsts, particularly when the voice is Angel's younger sister Marie, the story's conscience and prognosticator.

There is inevitability in the outcome of course, but what's missing for this reader is any insights on the human condition, anything beyond a sordid and exhausting recounting of reactions.

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2007, Stewart O’Nan accomplished something impossible: In a novel called “Last Night at the Lobster,” he made the closing of a Red Lobster restaurant as compelling as a murder mystery.

He has now done the opposite: His new novel, “Ocean State,” makes a murder mystery as compelling as the closing of a Red Lobster restaurant. It’s a curious but apparently intentional achievement in a book that feels allergic to its own suspense.

“Ocean State” opens with this shocking line: “When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.”

Even with the killer’s identity revealed, much remains tantalizingly hidden but only for a few pages. The full horror of the crime is soon revealed: The victim was a popular high school student. The two girls were fighting over a boy.

Disclosing these material details before the crime is reenacted in the novel, before the police investigation uncovers the truth and before the trial produces a verdict, O’Nan has purposefully drained the tension from this tragedy. What’s left for us in “Ocean State” are doleful reflections on various characters’ motives and reactions. It’s a gamble. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s only the middle of April and I’m already TWENTY-FIVE reviews behind. That being said, I’m not going to be doing more than jotting a few words on a lot of these. Ocean State was only my second Stewart O’Nan, but he’s kind of become a “where have you been all my life???” sort of author. When I saw the opening line for this latest release . . . .

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

I made sure my name was first on the library waiting list.

Please note for any of you who are maybe considering picking this up that although we knew the whodunit right off the bat, the body isn’t discovered until page 164 of this slim novel. While technically this is a murder mystery, like the other O’Nan story I read it’s really all about the people. And he gives you a whole bunch of them. The girl, the other girl, the boy, the sister, the mothers, the neighbors and so on. This won’t be for everyone (am I the only person who gets tired of feeling like that disclaimer needs to be added to everything I enjoy?), but I find his writing simply hypnotic. Oh, and it has a house on the cover *wink*

[CanadianReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

O’Nan’s newest work of fiction, Ocean State , is quite a departure from 2019’s Henry, Himself , the last of his three novels about the enduring marriage and final years of Henry and Emily Maxwell, a well-to-do Pittsburgh couple. The struggling Olivieras (the chaotic family at the heart of this new book)—single-mother Carol and her two daughters: the beautiful, ironically named Angel and her bookish younger sister, Marie—are a stark contrast to the WASPish Maxwells. Carol barely ekes out a living as a nurse’s aide in an old folks’ home. Hardly more mature than eighteen-year-old Angel, she drinks more than she should, sometimes to oblivion, and has a long history of unstable sexual relationships. She moves from one unreliable man to the next, endlessly seeking something—excitement, romance, distraction, or escape from her circumstances and responsibilities. Seeming to recognize a change of course is required, she resolves to date someone who’s “not her type”. Enter Russ, a homely, monied man almost fifteen years her senior. We’re told she hopes for a better life for her daughters and perhaps she thinks Russ is the ticket.

O’Nan’s novel may go by the informal name for Rhode Island—“ocean state”—on whose seacoast all of the action occurs, but the author is less interested in exploring a geographical state than the repercussions of an intense emotional one—the “oceanic" feeling of romantic (and sometimes pathological) love in which psychological boundaries dissolve and one merges with another.

I recently completed Frank Tallis’s The Incurable Romantic: And Other Tales of Madness and Desire , a book that presents case studies of patients whose romantic love is pathological. In it, Tallis, a clinical psychologist, observes that even for apparently normal people, falling in love looks and feels an awful lot like madness. The love-struck, with their poor sleep, reduced appetite, altered moods, and compulsions resemble addicts and the mentally ill. Tallis points out that functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown that some of the same regions of the brain are activated in those who are in love and those who are addicted. In Ocean State Stewart O’Nan seems to be as interested as Tallis in addictive, extreme kinds of love.

The novel is alternately narrated in the first and third persons by the youngest Oliviera, the not-entirely reliable Marie, who has her own addictive tendencies. She uses food, wine, and nitrous oxide to blunt the unease of being in her own skin. We get to know Marie quite well, but her narrative is mostly concerned with her tall, golden-haired, popular older sister. Angel, we are told several times, bears a remarkable physical resemblance to her mother, and has inherited her fiery temperament. She is ruled by her obsessive love for an attractive rich boy, Myles Parrish. The two have been together for three years. Myles has been known to stray, yet Angel’s hold on him is strong; he always comes back. This time the threat is amplified. Beatriz “Birdy” Alves—the petite, dark-eyed Portuguese-American girl Myles becomes involved with—has a passion for him that rivals Angel’s in its intensity and obsessiveness.

“When I was in eighth grade, my sister helped kill another girl. She was in love, my mother said, like it was an excuse,” Marie announces in the novel’s first sentences. She goes on to recollect the events leading up to Birdy’s murder, presenting parts of the story from the points of view of Carol, Angel, and Birdy. Myles’s perspective is notably limited, filtered through the eyes of the females. The reader turns the pages to find out whom it was that Angel “helped” with the killing ("Helped" turns out to be the wrong verb) and whether “love” really could be a reason or excuse for her actions. That question is not easily answered. One thing’s certain: there’s a lot of compulsive behaviour in this book.

I initially found Ocean State absorbing, but by the halfway point I'd had enough of sexual obsession and the teenage trysts at the Parrish family’s luxurious summer house. (The story is conveniently set during the blustery fall off-season when the summer home is unoccupied.) With its preponderance of thinly developed teenage characters and its preoccupation with sexual passion, Ocean State seems to be intended for a young adult rather than an adult audience. The novel is competently written, but it fails to deliver many insights about the sensational event at its centre, and the conclusion is just too tidy.

Having said all this, I'm still grateful to the publisher and Net Galley for providing me with a digital copy of this novel. O'Nan is a talented writer and I'm always interested to see what he's up to.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this as a goodreads giveaway. Thank you Grove Atlantic.

I officially started reading this on February 15, and finished it on the 18th. This is one of those books you don’t want to put down. I wanted to finish it in one sitting.

The characters in this story are very compelling and the story draws you in right away.

Possible spoilers…..



If you have seen plenty of true crime shows this story will resonate with you. It’s a crime of passion gone wrong.

Set some time aside for finishing this book in one sitting.

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A teenaged love triangle leads to murder. The book focuses on four characters - the killer, her sister, her mother and the victim. I was really glad that this book was short, because I found all of the trysts and the dramatic angst unbearable. The characters, including the victim and the boy who was the third leg of the triangle, were unlikable. This was the most banal murder imaginable and the conclusion was incredibly flat. This is the third book I’ve read by this author and I’ve liked one out of three. I can’t believe that the same author who wrote “West of Sunset” also wrote this book and “Henry Himself”. However, I now know to be very wary before reading another of his books. I received a free copies of the ebook and audio book from the publisher. 2.5 stars

[Tooter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 Stars

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl” is the first line of Stewart O’Nan’s latest masterpiece. Even though we know the killer before meeting the characters, this novel is every bit as gut-wrenching and nail-biting as any whodunnit. In fact, this portrait of working-class struggle is a tense, ominous, and gripping literary thriller, I can’t get it out of my head. The central events occur close to Halloween, as the weather turns cold and the wind rises. There’s a tang of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in the air, a parallel to thirteen-year-old Marie’s favorite book.

Ocean State takes place in a small Rhode Island town, Ashaway, an hour from where I grew up in Massachusetts. The primary focus is on a Portuguese American family. I grew up in a factory/mill town of first and second-generation Portuguese families, and came to appreciate their culture and community, which is sprinkled in lively ways throughout the book—the food, the fados. When O’Nan introduced the Oliveira family--mother Carol, a divorced nurse’s aide, and her two teenage daughters, book smart Marie and wild and wily Angel, a senior in high school, I felt them intimately, like they were in my living room. O’Nan never judges; he takes you into the hearts and lives of the people he writes about. The men in OS are at best generic and passive. The females are the dramatic protagonists, and the forces to be reckoned with. O’Nan’s ability to capture the female essence and sensibilities is stunning.

The primary plot focuses on a love triangle between Angel, her wealthy boyfriend, Myles, and Birdy, a peer of Angel’s who is besotted with Myles. Both Birdy and Angel are popular, but in different cliques. As tensions mount, so does escalating danger. The era for all the drama is 2009, the fallout of the financial crisis. The mills have all been closed down, and many of the primary employees were Portuguese immigrants and their children, the largest population affected by the closing of the mills. Carol uses her now fading good looks to attract men (often losers) to lift her up. She hops from one guy to the next, drinks too much, and largely misunderstands the extent which Angel and Marie are damaged by her choices.

Marie, the chubby academic striver, often resents her mother, and is jealous of her beautiful older sister, who she also dearly loves. When Angel is away, she snoops through her stuff, often finding things that intensify the arc of the story. Angel fears a dead end after high school, especially aware that Myles will follow his monied friends to college. She is desperately holding onto him, despite the fissures developing in their bond.

Carol weakly aims to eke out some degree of stability, but is too self-absorbed to notice all the cracks. Her ex-husband, the girls’ father, is an inconsistent role model, often displaying puerile and impulsive behaviors. Carol’s widowed mother is still in the picture, and copes with her empty life by drinking and chain-smoking. Carol has a new beau again, and she moves her family into one of the abandoned homes on River Road, near the dank river and the deserted Line & Twine mill, where her grandmother used to work in accounting. O’Nan consistently conveys the forsaken elements of the town. In stark, lean prose, he shadows his characters with a jilted past and a murky future. You hear the eerie river and the moody ocean, haunting and foreshadowing. I can still hear the rumble of the dark waters at night, long after finishing the story.

Ironically, the more the author informs us about the murder, the more thrilling it gets. Nothing ever feels anticlimactic, no matter how much we know. It’s a quiet and disquieting beast of a story, where violence erupts suddenly but organically. From the first line to the last, I was in its thrall. It continues to echo in my reading bones.

“The road’s empty, the moon low, almost full, its pale glow casting shadows. The wind rises, rattling the bare branches. …the river purls over the dam, invisible. …she waits, patient as an assassin…"

A huge thanks to Grove Press for sending me an ARC to read and review.

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing skills are 4 star. The placement locale feel is 3 stars. Everything else. Meh!

My enjoyment of reading it was 1 star. Not kidding. Barely.

This is a study done in YA level narrator think. There is literally nothing within it or any possessor that holds an IQ above about 85. If they are lucky.

You know from the very beginning what murder occurred and who did it. The rest of the story is 75% sexual dalliances accompanied by various low life druthers and effusion waves.

The mother of Angel and her sister, Carol? Raising her daughters' "right"- some say. There is nearly nothing that can role model worse than her bringing endless men into the house. And her "thought patterns". UGH times five.

Loving O'Nan earlier, this one I wish I'd never anticipated. What a disappointment. Doesn't even do girlhood itself very adequately, IMHO. Sad and miserable people without a clue to any true or working relative moralities. Stupid leading the clueless. And most of the men and boys are worse.

This story is the opposite of any female self-identity core strength displayed. Or anything that seats itself in inspiration or aspiration for any solid better. It is almost a complete reversal of his book Last Night at the Red Lobster which I adored. Here only stupidity reigns and wins. Plus he made closing a restaurant ten times more interesting than a murder? Strange, but true.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

We learn from the first sentence that a murder takes place and who is responsible, but this is no crime thriller whodunnit. It is a carefully constructed character investigation into four lives, told in first and third voices by women involved in the tragedy and forever changed.

Myles, spoiled rich boy, and Angel, from a blue collar background, have been together in the incendiary three years of highschool, during which they were regarded as the power couple. Then there is Maria who idolizes her older sister Angel and their mother, Carol, who makes questionable choices in her own life but is attempting to raise her girls right (i.e., not like her). Lastly is Birdie, Myles's secret passion, hopelessly besotted with him. All unfolds through the eyes of these women so that the men remain on the perimeter, shadowy and somewhat generic, but that is the point. It is the heat of hormone fueled teenage obsession and the dangers of the fallout that are front and center here, and how such events can affect even family members not directly responsible.

Stewart O'Nan has a deft touch with people and with locale, and as in other works, brings all to life, and I was particularly drawn to descriptors of the Charlestown, Westerly shoreline in Rhode Island during the blustery early fall season in which he sets this story. It fits the events perfectly.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an interesting premise and good writing, but something in the plot / structure went seriously wrong for me. It starts with a woman saying that her elder sister was involved in the murder of a classmate, and then from several points of view the story of what happened is revealed. I love books that have the audacity to tell us everything up front, but the trouble with this one is that we don't ever learn anything new about motive or what happened during or afterwards. And weirdly, we're never shown the murder (I assumed the reason was that there would be some surprise), and the story doesn't build to any climax. All making it a very odd listening / reading experience.

[Jerrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly, this book just made me nostalgic. I spent quite a bit of time living in Pawcatuck, CT right near the state line with Westerly, RI on the other side. I spent a lot of time in both places, as well as sitting in the Misquamicut beach traffic on summer weekends and going to the casino on the Mashantucket Pequot reservation. So, a lot of this just seemed very familiar. While the story rang very true for the area and the people in it, the plot is very straightforward and sad.

[Jennifer Segar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Calling clam cakes clam fritters in a novel set in Rhode Island is a legitimate crime.

[Judy Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hauntingly Beautiful!

Stewart O'Nan's latest OCEAN STATE is more of a "whydunit" and "how" versus a "whodunit" story of a family being tested. Readers are made aware in the opening chapter —the name of the murderer. How will they choose to move on from the tragedy? The layers are peeled back.

A teenage girl is murdered, the ripples of the crime, and its aftermath— both for the family and the town. Set in the moody Rhode Island, near the coast in a mill town, a slow-burning noir crime and at its heart is about love. The things we do for love often make us do horrific things—from greed, jealousy, and the extreme emotions of love.

Could be ripped from today's headlines. Set in a small working-class small town with no place to escape where everyone knows your business, from gossip, social media, family rivals, and of course, the small high school.

It's 2009, and the Oliviera family of three has moved to Ashaway, R.I., across from the Line & Twine, the town's mill.

Angel, the murderer, Carol, her mother, and Birdy, the victim. Told through the alternating perspectives of the four women. Marie, the younger sister, is the watcher. She idolizes her older sister, Angel.

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.

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

Carol is a hardworking divorced mother, barely scraping by with dead-end boyfriends and constantly moving. How will she handle the fallout?

Angel thinks her life will be better with someone from a different class. A first love. Myles is her rich boyfriend and not so smart. Not sure why these girls are so obsessed with him. Myles will be headed to college soon and Angel is getting worried he will slip from her. She is desperate. Does she really think this is a means to escape this town?

Needless to say, Birdy a high school senior has her eyes set on Myles even though she has a boyfriend. Angel, of course, does not like this. A kiss. She needs Birdy out of the way, now!

A novel of sisters, mothers, and daughters, and the terrible things love makes us do.

The author is a brilliant writer, with 20 novels under his belt. OCEAN STATE may very depressing for some; however, this is America the ugliness. Teens, kids, and adults killing others over basically nothing. Our world is evil. In most other books, you would discover the murderer at the end of the novel. Here, he chooses the beginning.

O'Nan does a great job in exploring the lives of before and after and where each winds up. My word of advice would be to know this before going into the book. It is the fallout. How a family handles a child or sister, a friend that commits murder, and events leading up to the murder.

I have read other books by the author and enjoy his writing style. However, this one was not one of my favorites. I am not a huge fan of teen drama and was not convinced she was sorry for her actions. There are consequences. However, this is fiction.

I also listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Sara Young never changed her voice as most do, so it was a little difficult to follow who was speaking. It's always difficult to know if the reading experience would be the same as the listening experience.

No doubt the author is highly talented and will continue to read his books. I am a big fan of literary fiction. The author does a good job of exploring the evils of humanity, and the whys of a working-class family. As always his writing is lyrical and beautiful.

My recommendation would be to read the book versus the audio format and go into it not looking for a suspense page-turner thriller, but more as a noir and the different contrasts of social and economic climates. From poor/rich, popular/unpopular, with much peer pressure.

The cover and the author drew me in. This book reminds me a little of Heather Gudenkauf's Before She Was Found. Also, fans of authors Randall Silvis and Elizabeth Strout will enjoy this one (big fan of both).

A special thank you to #NetGalley and #DreamscapeMedia for an audio ARC.

Blog Review Posted @ www.JudithDCollins
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Pub Date: March 15, 2022

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. At the beginning, Marie tells us what this novel is about, her older sister killed another girl. We follow Marie, her sister Angel, and Angel's high school classmate Birdie through the story. Sometimes Marie narrates, sometimes we follow the girls or their mother, and we get to see the whole thing play out. It's a simple story, reminiscent of the kind of thing you've seen on the news but given deeply personal detail. It may be too simple for some readers, but it feels emotionally honest. Especially the way Angel and Birdie both pine over the same boy, making bad decisions just for his sake, always blaming the other girl. (The boy is not much, the boy in this situation never is.)

This has great YA crossover appeal because it is honest about the girls' lives but has an adult tone, including some close third person observation of Marie's mother.

I did the audio, which I enjoyed, but in the 3rd person sections it can seem to switch very suddenly without a break from one character to the other.

[Jim Thomsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl. She was in love, my mother said, like it was an excuse." It's a hell of a first line, and OCEAN STATE is a hell of a novel, but the line also betrays the odd bifurcation of its story that Stewart O'Nan tries to bridge, not always satisfyingly.

Let's back up a little: Angel Oliviera, a teenager in Astaway, Rhode Island, killed Birdy Alves, the girl who lured her boyfriend into cheating (with his full complicity and consent, of course). That's no spoiler; it is, literally, the first thing we learn in OCEAN STATE. The first half of the novel shows, with delicious depth, the delirium of love and lust and insecurity that dopamine-bombs the teenage brain and body every millisecond, leading them to realize they are doing horrible things and a second later deciding that doesn't matter because they desire what they desire, and there's nothing to be done about it. And then come the complications and instant crushing consequences of social media, the too-late understanding that eyes — and cell-phone cameras — are everywhere, and the cheating is dragged into the light.

But what to do when neither girl wants to let go of Myles Parrish, and Myles, pretty dope that he is, wants to let go of neither of them? As they say, there's no way to divide three into two and come out even. And so murder — premeditated or otherwise, assisted or otherwise — happens around the halfway point of OCEAN STATE.

A lesser novel would dwell in the dark aftermath of murder and under the black cloud of suspicion, and eventually somebody would break and either develop a conscience or kill again to protect themselves against someone else's consequence. That doesn't happen in OCEAN STATE: O'Nan is too good to steer into such a trap of triteness.

But what O'Nan does instead with the second half of OCEAN STATE is just as puzzling and unsatisfying: he turns a character study into a near-textbook legal thriller, zipping past his characters in favor of set-piece scenes in which Angel comes under suspicion, is arrested after she fails to cover her tracks as carefully as she thought she had, and then sits and jail and later at home while lawyers and judges decide what to do with her. She doesn't feel particularly bad about what she's done, and is ready to accept her fate when it comes. The fate comes. Years pass. Life stories are tied up neatly. The end.

It all feels like I read a hundred-plus pages of pure epilogue. And all the while, I couldn't help thinking: If O'Nan had explored character and consciencelessness and consequence in the same unhurried way he did in fine previous novels like SONG SFOR THE MISSING or THE SPEED QUEEN or THE NIGHT COUNTRY, OCEAN STATE might have been a more satisfying experience. But what we have here is a novel that should have twice as long in the register of its first half all the way through. Points of view featuring Birdy and her family and Angels' mother Carol, wrapped up in her own romantic wanderlusts, are oddly cauterized, their abrupt ends hanging in the air and drifting smoke around the pages that follow.

Because that first half is O'Nan at his best: using plain-eyed prose to make piercing observations and people and place, through the miss-nothing eyes of Angel's preteen sister Marie. Lines like "Our father was gone, and our mother couldn’t stop wanting to be in love. “I swear this is the last time,” she’d say, dead sober, and a month later she’d bring home another loser ... In the beginning, everything was new. She lost weight and kissed us too much and made promises she couldn’t keep" and "I watched them like a scorekeeper, silently recording every slight and insult, every failure to be kind. I was thirteen, and like all children, had an overdeveloped sense of justice. I wanted everyone to be happy, despite our actual lives" and "We were already searching for clues to what she’d done with her weekend, sniffing the air for any hint of weed or body spray, checking the ashtrays for Marlboro butts, the recycling bin for extra beer bottles" really stick the landing, and stick to the readerly ribs for a good long while. Everybody knows somebody like these people. As O'Nan notes of Marie: "Like any kid sister, Marie is a sneak, and knows everyone’s hiding places. Vibrators, love letters, weed, condoms—nothing’s safe from her."

The POVs of Angel and Birdy are just as well done, though there's a oily touch of male gaze here and there in his descriptions of their sexual appetites. But he gets the desperate need of dopamine addlement that drives every sane thought out of a teenager's head, and makes them uniquely dangerous behind their innocent faces. As Birdy reflects, passingly, on the boyfriend on whom she's cheating: "Hector takes her hand as if to show everyone they’re together, a habit she now wishes she hadn’t encouraged. It’s not his fault. Again, she wants to defend him against her newfound cruelty. He’s not the one who’s changed. Even in this she’s selfish. She wants to believe what’s happening has nothing to do with him." And Angel's heart is all fire and ice: "This isn’t the first time he’s cheated, she guesses, though she has no evidence to prove it. He swears it was just a hookup, nothing real. She doesn’t care—he shouldn’t even be looking at other girls. She may be wrong, but she blames the bitch more. Guys are stupid. They can’t resist it when you shove it in their face. The bitch knew he was taken and she pursued him anyway, breaking the first rule. For that trespass, she needs to pay." Thinking isn't part of the heart's calculus.

And thinking is what fades away in the aftermath of Birdy's murder. Just the tick of the clock toward justice, or some loose approximation of it. Maybe that's O'Nan's point, but if so, it isn't a particularly profound or compelling one. Because the first half has us on the hook: We want to not only know what happens to these people, but what they're feeling inside about it. The reader, based on the first hundred pages, has been primed for this expectation, and then O'Nan took it away from them to focus almost exclusively on exterior developments. This a short novel, too short, and while O'Nan excels in that form — who doesn't love LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER? — OCEAN STATE has a different scope and scale, a novel-length one, and it should have had a page count to match.

[Mary Lins · Rating 5 out of 5]

FROM THE FIRST SENTENCE I knew I was going to love, “Ocean State”, by Stewart O’Nan. I’ve been a fan since “Last Night at the Lobster”, reading his entire oeuvre over the years. All his novels have enthralled me, but perhaps it’s those that deal with “regular people” that captivate the most…and whose characters linger in my mind.

The female characters O’Nan creates in “Ocean State” are utterly real, plausible, and damaged. For parts of the novel, thirteen-year-old Marie is the first-person narrator telling us about the murder of a young woman. While we know who is murdered, and by whom, we are still compelled to turn the pages of this novel that provides a fascinating look into the lives of these characters, their motivations, their demons, their terrible choices.

It’s a tribute to O’Nan’s prodigious talent as a writer in that he has inhabited the minds of these teenagers so flawlessly, so believably.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it was well written, there was no purpose to the story. No one grows or learns from the incident. Nothing propelled me forward in this book other than trying to finish it and find some point of why I should care about these characters or the story.