- Hardcover: 305 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday (Oct 1 1994)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385475748
- ISBN-13: 978-0385475747
- Product Dimensions: 18.5 x 13.2 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The lives of two small-town Pennsylvania families connected by tragedy are related in this assured and affecting first novel by the author of the short-story collection, In the Walled City. Narrator Arthur Parkinson has been haunted by the murder of his former baby sitter, Annie Marchand, which occured when he was in high school. As he relates the circumstances leading to Annie's death-the culmination of a string of rash and heedless acts that included leaving her husband, engaging in an affair with her best friend's boyfriend and proving negligent in the care of her young daughter-Artie also chronicles his own parents' acrimonious separation, which occurred during those same dreary months of 1974. Annie's decision not to reconcile with her wimpish husband, Glenn, who loves her devotedly and doggedly, is paralleled by Artie's mother's decision to divorce his father, the beginning of the family's downward economic slide. Both sets of adults behave like adolescents, and the effects on their children are grave and irrevocable. O'Nan is a skilled writer who views the lives of his working-class characters with unsentimental compassion; he understands how they are entrapped by social background and stark economics as well as their own personal inadequacies-in Annie's case, her impetuous reactions and fierce temper. The novel's elegiac tone is perfectly controlled, and angst and the lingo of male adolescence are rendered with wry fidelity. But O'Nan's triumph is Annie; in spite of her faults, readers will empathize as she makes the mistakes that will bring her heartbreaking life to an end. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Arty Parkinson, the protagonist of this fine first novel, returns one Christmas to his hometown of Butler, Pennsylvania, to confront his haunting past-specifically, the winter of 1974, when he turned 15 and two terrible things happened: his family fell apart, and Annie Marchand, the young neighbor who had once been his baby-sitter, was murdered. O'Nan (In the Walled City, Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1993) weaves together these seemingly disparate small-town tragedies-one narrated in the first person, the other in the third-with consummate skill, seamlessly shifting the focus among characters he wishes to make the reader care about. This winner of the 1993 Pirates Alley William Faulkner Prize for the Novel is recommended for fiction collections.
David Sowd, formerly with Stark Cty. District Lib., Canton, Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
David Sowd, formerly with Stark Cty. District Lib., Canton, Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
I WAS IN THE BAND the fall my father left, in the second row of trombones, in the middle because I was a freshman. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
I WAS IN THE BAND the fall my father left, in the second row of trombones, in the middle because I was a freshman. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Influential Book,
By A Customer
This review is from: Snow Angels (Paperback)
I first bought this book four years ago and have read it 5 times since. Haunting images, desperate characters. Although this book is about murder and divorce, there are no villans and no heros. This book made Stewart O'Nan my favorite author. Also check out THE SPEED QUEEN
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth it's weight and its weight was heavy....,
By A Customer
This review is from: Snow Angels: A Novel (Paperback)
Snow Angels was an unexpected and welcomed diversion, dense and thoughtful, heavy and sad, but always worth the read. Dismissing this book becauuse it packs a despairing wallop is wasteful; give yourself a little time to experience the saddness and you'll feel all the more human. Doesn't fall in my top ten, but maybe the top 25 of recent reads. A very worthwhile investment of time.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Quick read, unsatisfying,
By A Customer
This review is from: Snow Angels (Paperback)
While the characterization is often vibrant and exacting, this debut novel falls short of its promise. A main shortcoming is that the story of Arthur and his family, one of the two interwoven tales, fails to be more than filler, a structural place-holder. And Arthur's telling of the other story, that of a woman several years older than him, rings false--his need to relate these events is nowhere evident. Most disappointing is that many of O'Nan's sentences are ragged and difficult to read. One gets the sense he'll get a lot better.
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