When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.
From the striking opening line of Ocean State, the reader is thrust into the world of the murderer, Angel, and her family, and the victim, Birdy, as they plummet towards a conclusion both tragic and inevitable. Overarching it all is the testimony of Angel's younger sister Marie, who reflects back on the doomed autumn of 2009 with all the wisdom of hindsight.
At its heart, the murder is a crime of passion - 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 story of working-class life in Rhode Island, animating the banality of poverty.
Propulsive, moving and deeply rendered, Ocean State is a masterful novel by one of the great storytellers of hard-scrabble America.
