This story of a crime of passion in a small Rhode Island suburb is very much about what is not said rather than what is said, and about the violence that can explode out of a calm that would seem to be the opposite of turbulent. Despite the banal surface, this novel invites us in — we want to know these people, learn about their complexities ... 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 ... It’s hard to tell why O’Nan left out the male perspectives, as at moments the novel feels like it is missing something without them. And yet the development of the book shows these women and their very separate voices singing in a bittersweet counterpoint that rises to an unforgettable shout and then subsides ... Through prolonged exposure to the girls’ thoughts, O’Nan builds the novel’s tension until it feels like the air right before a monsoon ... The entire telling becomes an act of empathy. It’s an invention, but one that drives home irrevocably and elegantly what you’d been feeling as you read but did not fully acknowledge: that there are as many different kinds of pain as there are people.

Stewart O’Nan opens his 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 interesting and enduring ... Whatever the genre he’s playing with, O’Nan is an enticing writer, a master of the illuminatingly mundane moments ... 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. 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 everything.

Ocean State is a haunting immersion into the desperate and immediate world of adolescence gone wrong, where emotional certainty dictates that actions be taken before rational minds can pull back. The result is a gripping march to the inevitable, presented through the close perspective of four women whose lives will soon be forever changed ... Despite her preteen awkwardness, Marie is a voice of burgeoning wisdom, and we benefit from her periodic turns as narrator, a shift that proves especially powerful at novel’s end ... Descriptions are simple and to the point, with thoughtful prose matching the surroundings ... In addition to granting us close proximity to each character’s movements, O’Nan deftly provides a larger collage of the enormity that unfolds, leaving us with reflection of the tenuousness of life, the wish that this tragedy could have been avoided, and the privilege of having been witness to its progression.

...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 ... it should be mentioned that the sections of the story narrated by the murder victim, Birdy, gather an almost excruciating tension as she approaches her inevitable fate. O'Nan makes her much more than a simple plot device, and it's what elevates the story to more than just a page-turner ... it's hard to not feel frustrated at points with the almost casual way the murderers face the consequences — or don't — of the crime they committed.

His new novel, Ocean State, makes a murder mystery as compelling as the closing of a Red Lobster restaurant. It’s a curious but apparently intentional achievement in a book that feels allergic to its own suspense ... Even with the killer’s identity revealed, much remains tantalizingly hidden but only for a few pages ... O’Nan has purposefully drained the tension from this tragedy. What’s left for us in Ocean State are doleful reflections on various characters’ motives and reactions. It’s a gamble ... As usual, O’Nan writes about financially stressed people with a clear and empathetic sense of the constant pressures they endure ... O’Nan’s careful, sepia-toned observations offer no satirical wit on the machinations of horny teenagers nor any chilling insight on the horrors that sexual desire can activate ... we don’t particularly need a novel that feels so unwilling to tell us something we haven’t already heard. Even the act of murder itself is politely obscured in these pages, and the trial that takes place late in the story does so largely offstage.

O’Nan writes persuasively about the frisson of infidelity and desperate stolen moments, but the characters act more like adults in an extramarital affair than like teenagers ... O’Nan describes the need for passionate connection well, even though he sees it as ultimately destructive ... But what really stretches credulity is the incriminating picture on Facebook ... It turns out the stakes aren’t nearly as high when it comes to first-degree murder. Angel has a temper, so the crime of passion is easily imagined. But imagine it we must because the killing is not on the page. We don’t see it happen and we don’t see what happens afterward. Nor do we learn about any psychological fallout. Nobody’s behavior is examined or described, either before or after, certainly not with anything close to complexity. There’s no shock, no disbelief. In fact, it all gets rather humdrum.

Ocean State is, above all else, a story of the things love does to us, both the beautiful and terrible. The book will pull a reader in immediately, but it ultimately falls flat in delivering the plot-twisting suspense it’s opening seems to promise. What you learn on that very first page ultimately comes to light in more or less the way you would expect, without any shocking twists or turns to explain why the answer is given away so quickly.

...rather than homing in on the murder, O’Nan focuses on four women at the center of the story, alternating between the contemporaneous perspectives ... O’Nan’s detailed, sympathetic portrayal of his characters and their community will appeal to fans of Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016), Olive Kitteridge (2008), and Olive, Again (2019).

This is not a whodunit but an exploration of why the murder happened; O’Nan tells the story with his characteristic compassion (and artistic boldness) by inhabiting the consciousnesses of four unhappy, conflicted females ... the ensuing tragedy remains murky. The novel’s main thrust is also unclear ... However, the book is rich in social detail, including the teenagers’ socially networked world, and warmed by O’Nan’s customary tenderness for ordinary lives ... Not one of this gifted author’s best, though it’s finely rendered with poignant realism.

...beautifully rendered and heartbreaking ... O’Nan evokes the feverish excitement of young love ... This isn’t a crime novel; it’s a Shakespearean tragedy told in spare, poetic, insightful prose.