Emily Maxwell is back.
The star of Stewart O’Nan’s novel “Emily, Alone” and a co-star of O’Nan’s “Henry, Himself,” she plays a supporting role in the author’s latest, “Evensong.” She’s one of several elderly female characters, mostly widows, mostly living in an independent-living complex where they have settled into being a family of friends.
I know a tiny bit about this situation — my mom lives in a similar place, has a similar weekly game group and a similar bunch of friends, who deliver meals to each other, drive each other to hair and eye doctor appointments and bus as a group to plays and concerts. From what I can tell, O’Nan has depicted the comforts, joys and heartbreaks of this kind of situation with precision and compassion.
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Category Archives: Book Reviews
The Boston Globe: Stewart O’Nan’s ‘Evensong’ is a little miracle of a novel
Check out the great review of Evensong in The Boston Globe!
How does Stewart O’Nan understand so deeply what it feels like to be an elderly woman?
O’Nan’s 19th novel, “Evensong,” follows half a year in the lives of Susie, Kitzi, Emily, and Arlene, four women in the twilight of life. They are the core members of the Humpty Dumpty Club, a large, loosely knit group of older women in Pittsburgh who look out for each other as their lives contract and their independence falters.
Directed by the highly organized Joan — she of the “highlighter and color-coded file folders” — the women run errands, pick up prescriptions, and groceries, drive people to medical appointments, and, eventually, visit them in the hospital and plan their funerals. This is more than volunteering; this is assuming responsibility, with spreadsheets and follow-up phone calls, and dropping everything, when necessary, to dash out the door, even on a holiday, even late at night.
The Day: Stewart O’Nan’s new novel ‘Ocean State’ explores small-town Rhody
Regarding the murder that lies at the heart of “Ocean State,” the new Stewart O’Nan novel, the “whodunit” aspect lasts exactly 9 words into the book.
The first sentence of a story that takes place predominantly in Ashaway, Rhode Island, in 2009, reads: “When I was in eighth grade, my sister helped kill another girl.”
It’s a hell of an authorial gamble, and that O’Nan did so suggests he relished the challenge to shoulder significant weight in terms of developing characters and sustaining tension throughout the book after that opening detonation.
To that end, “Ocean State” isn’t a typical thriller — if indeed it IS one. Two high school girls are infatuated with the same boy, a wealthy senior named Myles who, both women know (on some level), will graduate and head off to an elite college without a glance back. He casually and deceptively ping pongs between his beautiful longtime girlfriend Angel and relative newcomer Birdy, who has her own boyfriend but is willing to leave him for even a remote shot at Myles.
O’Nan, a New York Times bestselling writer whose other novels include “Last Night at the Lobster,” “City of Secrets,” “Henry, Himself,” “The Good Wife” and “The Night Country,” will read from and discuss “Ocean State” Thursday in Westerly’s Savoy Bookshop & Cafe.
https://www.theday.com/article/20220405/ENT02/220409761
The New York Times Review – Ocean State
In “Ocean State,” O’Nan is subverting the thriller, borrowing its momentum to propel this bracing, chilling novel. Whereas thrillers tend to use murders as a prurient jumping-off point, the entryway to the reader’s pleasure — that chance to play Columbo or Kinsey Millhone in our heads — O’Nan takes his time, humanizing this story to make the hole where the victim was suitably substantial.
Mary Pols, The New York Times, “A Thriller Wrapped in a Story of Sisters and First Love”
Latest Reviews: Ocean State
“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. Even as he inverts the form, veteran novelist Stewart O’Nan effectively keeps you turning the pages quickly with this tragic story of teenage love.
“Told through multiple voices, “Ocean State” examines the murder of a young girl” – StarTribune
Despite the banal surface, this novel invites us in — we want to know these people, learn about their complexities. In the end, they’re as interesting as you or I; O’Nan’s great gift is that we want to know more about every person he writes, no matter how unremarkable they seem from the outside.
“A murder in the suburbs – Ennui meets passion in O’Nan’s latest novel” – Boston Globe
In the first pages of this reversed psychological thriller, we learn that teenage Angel has killed a girl; soon there’s little question as to whom and why. (“Love.”) In flashbacks, the suspense comes from peeling back the layers in Stewart O’Nan’s immersive character studies.
“8 New Books To Read This Month” – Vanity Fair
The Works of Stewart O'Nan 