8 S UNDAY, MARCH 13, 2022
STEWART O’NAN OPENShis new novel,
“Ocean State,” with this grabby narration
by one Marie Oliviera: “When I was in
eighth grade my sister helped kill another
girl.” It almost sounds as if he’s about to
launch into one of those contemporary
twisty thrillers, but what he does with this
quick sketch of a plot is far more interest-
ing and enduring.
It’s 2009, and the Oliviera family of three
has moved yet again, to a long-empty
house in Ashaway, R.I., across from the
Line & Twine, the town’s shuttered mill.
This new rental has bedrooms for both Ma-
rie and her older sister, Angel — but for
Marie, that’s not a good thing. Marie idol-
izes everything about Angel. The way
she’s funny and can do spins on roller
skates. How she’s tall, pale and like their
mother, Carol, was, a bombshell. Marie fa-
vors their part-Portuguese father, Frank
(the outsider in his own sad divorced dad
apartment), and describes herself as
chubby and klutzy. Carol promises that
she’ll find her own special talent, but Marie
is skeptical.
“My mother’s talent was finding new
boyfriends and new places for us to live,”
Marie tells us. Both the places and the men
are trending downward, but no matter who
the men are, they aren’t good for the girls.
Marie’s vivid, precise portrait of Carol in
love: “She lost weight and kissed us too
much and made promises she couldn’t
keep.” The new boyfriend, Russ, a fire-
fighter, is old and reminds Angel of Papa
Smurf. The last one, Wes, necessitated a
911 call and yet isn’t entirely out of the pic-
ture. The girls literally sniff Carol’s sheets,
carnal detectives.
Narratively, O’Nan mounts a defense for
Carol, showing how she’s tender and atten-
tive at her nursing job, following her as she
frets about her girls. Still, she is unable to
stop chasing the last vestiges of her own
youth.
As if in opposition to her mother’s per-
ceived flightiness, Angel has been stead-
fastly committed to her rich, guitar-strum-
ming boyfriend, Myles Parrish, for three
years. “Myles was her first. Myles is her
only.” When Angel visits his family at their
summer house just up the coast, helping
them with chores like putting out the flags
on the deck — O’Nan’s eye for tiny details
is exquisite — she feels a fleeting pride of
ownership. However, Myles will go to col-
lege next year and then, “she knows she’ll
lose him to some rich girl and there’s noth-
ing she can do.”
In the fall of 2009, though, the girl threat-
ening their relationship isn’t rich at all.
Birdy Alves is a petite high school senior
who works at the local D’Angelo (a New
England chain of sandwich shops), lives
with her widowed mother and gets good
grades. She has a boyfriend, but all she
wants is Myles. When we see them togeth-
er in their first hookup at the empty sum-
mer house, Birdy is aware that she can’t be
the first girl he brought there, but melts
when he “pushes his hair from his face like
Keanu.”
Every text is a thrill, every wait between
communications is torture. When Birdy is
kissing Myles on the head or briefly “al-
lowed to hang on his arm” like a real girl-
friend, O’Nan takes us right into the disori-
enting ecstasy of young love. Myles is the
least explored character in the novel; still,
it’s clear he’s not worth either of these
girls’ time, let alone their lives.
The spoiler is in that first sentence, but
when Birdy has said goodbye to her family
dog, a cocker named Ofelia (oh the de-
tails!), and headed off to her fate, a light
goes out. We become mourners while
O’Nan turns his narration to the investiga-
tion, to due process and family wreckage.
Whatever the genre he’s playing with —
this is his 20th book (not counting novellas
and collections) — O’Nan is an enticing
writer, a master of the illuminatingly mun-
dane moments. In “Henry Himself”
(2019), a prequel to the Maxwell family se-
ries he started with “Wish You Were Here”
in 2002, the climax, such as it is, features a
family gathering for a chore, the disman-
tling of an unneeded rooftop television an-
tenna. But in a broader sense, he’s there for
the societal crumbling, whether it be a
seemingly safe middle-class family like the
Maxwells, diminishing from one genera-
tion to the next, a business closing (“Last
Night at the Lobster”), another young
murderer’s life story (“The Speed Queen”)
or the Alves and Oliviera families falling
apart; part of Marie Oliviera dies that fall
when she loses both her innocence and her
sister as her constant.
In “Ocean State,” O’Nan is subverting
the thriller, borrowing its momentum to
propel this bracing, chilling novel. Where-
as thrillers tend to use murders as a pruri-
ent 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. Highly specific to
the landmarks of the real Ashaway, but
ringing with the universal, “Ocean State”
is a map for the emotional dead ends of
America, where kids kill other kids over
seemingly nothing. O’Nan understands
that at least in the moment, it is for every-
thing. 0
Rip Tide
In the hands of a veteran storyteller, readers have a chance to play detective.
By MARY POLS
OCEAN STATE
By Stewart O’Nan
240 pp. Atlantic Monthly Press. $27.
KARLOTTA FREIER
O’Nan takes his time, humanizing
this story to make the hole where
the victim was suitably substantial.
MARY POLS is the author of a memoir, “Acciden-
tally on Purpose,” and recently finished her
first novel. She works at Bates College.
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