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Starred Review of Ocean State – Publishers Weekly!
There’s no mystery about what happens in this beautifully rendered and heartbreaking story from O’Nan (West of Sunset). In the opening pages, teenager Angel Oliviera murders another teen, Birdy Alves. O’Nan explores what led up to the killing and paints an intimate canvas of a small Rhode Island town in 2009. Women, teenage and adult, are the focal points and the narrators: Angel’s observant younger sister, Marie, sets the stage, and Birdy, Angel, and Angel’s mother, Carol, tell the story through a series of flashbacks and internal monologues. Birdy is dating Hector, but she’s in a clandestine relationship with Angel’s boyfriend. Angel frets about her mother’s desperate attempts to find love. Carol wants a better life for her daughters, but senses it’s “beyond her control” (the 2009 setting underscores the economic fragility). Social media serves as the ugly catalyst for the action that slowly, inexorably escalates. O’Nan evokes the feverish excitement of young love (“She only means to kiss him goodbye but they don’t know how to stop”) and the truly destructive force of jealousy. This isn’t a crime novel; it’s a Shakespearean tragedy told in spare, poetic, insightful prose. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Co. (Mar.)
Publishers Weekly (https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8021-5927-4)
From The Week: Michael Koryta recommends 6 books for spooky season
The Night Country by Stewart O’Nan (2003).
The Week
O’Nan dazzles by capturing the everyday and the human heart, so this tale — narrated by the ghost of a teen who died in a car wreck on Halloween night — might seem like a departure. What makes it work is how precisely he maintains that insight into the everyday and the human heart. O’Nan writes of autumn in New England: “It’s the best time of year up here, the only season you want from us, our pastoral past — witch hunts and woodsmoke, the quaintly named dead in mossy churchyards.”
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Lividian Publications Limited Edition of The Night Country!
Lividian Publications is pleased to announce our deluxe signed and slipcased Limited Edition hardcover of The Night Country by Stewart O’Nan, which we’re offering as a “Preorder Only Limited Edition,” meaning the orders received between October 9 and October 31 will set the print run!
This deluxe special edition is being lavishly crafted with collectors and readers alike in mind. Exclusive to our slipcased Limited Edition is a “lost” introduction by the author and a new afterword by Paul Tremblay, plus eleven original black and white illustrations and a beautiful full-color wrap-around dust jacket painting by François Vaillancourt.
“Scary, sad, funny, and when it comes to young people at the end of their ropes and hopes, dead on the money. The Night Country takes you away to a strange and special place while reminding you of the places you’ve been—especially the spooky Halloween places. A gracefully written, mesmerizing read.”
— Stephen King
[Preorder]
The New York Times: When Baseball Comes Back, It Should Look Totally Different
Audra Melton for The New York Times
People turn to baseball because they want to feel a connection — to the players, to the suspense. “Sports is always somewhat fresh,” Stewart O’Nan, a novelist, said. “The great thing about baseball is, most games you’re going to see something that you’ve never seen before. It’s also a way to forget about the world. It’s a release from the things that are weighing on you.”
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The Works of Stewart O'Nan 