Snow Angels: A Novel
by Stewart O'Nan
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Arthur Parkinson is fourteen during the dreary winter of 1974, experiencing the confusing pangs of adolescence and the pain of his parents' divorce. His world is shattered further by the sudden and violent death of Annie Marchand, his beloved former babysitter. Narrated by the adult Arthur, who continues to be haunted by memories, the story of a young man's unraveling family and the circumstances leading up to Annie's death forms the backdrop for an intimate tale of the price of love and show more belonging, told in a spare, translucent, and unexpectedly tender voice. show lessTags
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In Snow Angels Stewart O’Nan gives the reader an up close and personal look at small town America in 1974. He perfectly captures the dreariness of the early winter season and two separate stories unfold as fourteen year old Arthur Parkinson recalls this strange time when his former babysitter is murdered and his parents marriage fell apart. Arthur’s way of coping is to get stoned and burying himself in his music ignoring his parent’s acrimonious dealings with each other.
The story of Annie Marchand is a tragic one. She left her husband, engaged in a seedy affair with her best friend’s boyfriend and took her eyes off her young daughter at the wrong time. Her estranged husband had already attempted suicide and then turned to show more religion but when things turn really bad, he blames Annie and can’t seem to move on.
These two stories are delivered in a unique style with Arthur recalling his fourteenth year in a series of flashbacks, while Annie’s story is told in the present tense which gives it a strong impact. Snow Angels is an unsentimental yet compassionate story about flawed people caught up in events beyond their control, and, although rather depressing, kept this reader engaged throughout. show less
The story of Annie Marchand is a tragic one. She left her husband, engaged in a seedy affair with her best friend’s boyfriend and took her eyes off her young daughter at the wrong time. Her estranged husband had already attempted suicide and then turned to show more religion but when things turn really bad, he blames Annie and can’t seem to move on.
These two stories are delivered in a unique style with Arthur recalling his fourteenth year in a series of flashbacks, while Annie’s story is told in the present tense which gives it a strong impact. Snow Angels is an unsentimental yet compassionate story about flawed people caught up in events beyond their control, and, although rather depressing, kept this reader engaged throughout. show less
The short version: Read this book. Buy this book. Preferably, not in that order.
Except from Full Review:
The best quality about Snow Angels, shared by one of my favorite movies, 5 Centimeters Per Second, is that it exemplifies the idea of simply being a slice of life book. As the story unfolds, the conclusion comes, not with a nice tidied ending, with life better for all those involved, but with the emotional realization that what has occurred is simply life. Nothing about Arthur or his mother and father will get better. Everything from the murder of his baby sitter to the divorce of his parents simply is.
Writing, as profession, means that the writer must win or earn the readers trust. Sometimes, far too often, writers attempt to earn show more this trust by creating thin emotional attachments to characters and tying the story up neatly in the end. O’Nan takes that premise, grabs hold of our emotions as a reader, and never lets go. He doesn’t rely on gimmicks of quick actions and lots of character references that pass for depth and emotion connection. No, he earns that with quiet character moments, building to the realization in the end that Arthur’s crappy existence isn’t going to get any better. No magical resolution to end Snow Angels, instead replaced with an emotional resolution where the readers catharsis is the acknowledgment that Snow Angels mirrors life so well.
Full Review:
http://sypherhawq.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/book-review-snow-angels-by-stewart-on... show less
Except from Full Review:
The best quality about Snow Angels, shared by one of my favorite movies, 5 Centimeters Per Second, is that it exemplifies the idea of simply being a slice of life book. As the story unfolds, the conclusion comes, not with a nice tidied ending, with life better for all those involved, but with the emotional realization that what has occurred is simply life. Nothing about Arthur or his mother and father will get better. Everything from the murder of his baby sitter to the divorce of his parents simply is.
Writing, as profession, means that the writer must win or earn the readers trust. Sometimes, far too often, writers attempt to earn show more this trust by creating thin emotional attachments to characters and tying the story up neatly in the end. O’Nan takes that premise, grabs hold of our emotions as a reader, and never lets go. He doesn’t rely on gimmicks of quick actions and lots of character references that pass for depth and emotion connection. No, he earns that with quiet character moments, building to the realization in the end that Arthur’s crappy existence isn’t going to get any better. No magical resolution to end Snow Angels, instead replaced with an emotional resolution where the readers catharsis is the acknowledgment that Snow Angels mirrors life so well.
Full Review:
http://sypherhawq.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/book-review-snow-angels-by-stewart-on... show less
I've read other books by this author and thought they were too harsh and dramatic. However, I couldn't put this one down. There is no doubt that O'Nan is an incredible author.
The setting is small town America. The winter climate in northern Pennsylvania is depressingly bitter cold. This is a story focusing on the mistakes made that end badly.
While practicing in the band, a young man hears a series of gunshots, coming from the woods near where the band is practicing. Learning that the person killed was previously his babysitter when his parents were married. As he witnesses the marriage spinning out of control, he learns his father has a lover. Living with his distraught mother who selfishly uses him as her counselor. Sadly, he is trying show more his best to handle both the death of someone he knew, and the nastiness swirling around him from the demise of his parent's marriage.
O'Nan then takes us inside another story of love gone wrong, and in vivid description tells the story of the man married to Anne (the babysitting of the young man,) and her husband Glenn. Dramatic, brutal, they separate but dance around trying to reunite. In the meantime, both find solace in the arms of others. Both Glen and Anne are tragic characters. Both depressed, and trying to hold onto a thread of something that they dream could work.
Their small daugther Tara sustains the brunt of Anne's inability to get her act together and tries to understand why her mother smacks her around so much.
One night, Tara walks away from the house after yet another smacking incident. As a frantic set of parents and a community strive to find the little girl through a bitter storm, it is the young man who heard the shots while practicing in the band., who finds the small child floating in a body of water. Her small bloated, dead, cold body is an image he holds and cannot release. Now, he wrestles with his family falling apart, and the murder of his previous babysitter.
O'Nan does an excellent job of weaving small-town, going no-where life and two sets of married people struggling to cope, and doing a very poor job of it all.
This is an incredibly well-written story of struggle and failure.
Highly recommended. I read it through the night. show less
The setting is small town America. The winter climate in northern Pennsylvania is depressingly bitter cold. This is a story focusing on the mistakes made that end badly.
While practicing in the band, a young man hears a series of gunshots, coming from the woods near where the band is practicing. Learning that the person killed was previously his babysitter when his parents were married. As he witnesses the marriage spinning out of control, he learns his father has a lover. Living with his distraught mother who selfishly uses him as her counselor. Sadly, he is trying show more his best to handle both the death of someone he knew, and the nastiness swirling around him from the demise of his parent's marriage.
O'Nan then takes us inside another story of love gone wrong, and in vivid description tells the story of the man married to Anne (the babysitting of the young man,) and her husband Glenn. Dramatic, brutal, they separate but dance around trying to reunite. In the meantime, both find solace in the arms of others. Both Glen and Anne are tragic characters. Both depressed, and trying to hold onto a thread of something that they dream could work.
Their small daugther Tara sustains the brunt of Anne's inability to get her act together and tries to understand why her mother smacks her around so much.
One night, Tara walks away from the house after yet another smacking incident. As a frantic set of parents and a community strive to find the little girl through a bitter storm, it is the young man who heard the shots while practicing in the band., who finds the small child floating in a body of water. Her small bloated, dead, cold body is an image he holds and cannot release. Now, he wrestles with his family falling apart, and the murder of his previous babysitter.
O'Nan does an excellent job of weaving small-town, going no-where life and two sets of married people struggling to cope, and doing a very poor job of it all.
This is an incredibly well-written story of struggle and failure.
Highly recommended. I read it through the night. show less
I first discovered Stewart O'Nan through his non-fiction when I read The Circus Fire: A True Story. It was a very good book and ever since then I thought I should read his fiction. I am glad I did because it is also very good, especially Snow Angels which is impressive for a first novel. Growing up in a small town myself and playing in the high school band I could relate in part to the story of Arthur Parkinson. While I have not experienced the tragedy and difficult home life he relates in his story and that of his neighbor Annie Marchand, the author brings them alive in his vivid portrayal of their lives and the lives of their family and friends.
The story links two families, almost indirectly, by a tragedy that affects them in show more enormously painful ways, it is a specific example of a universal theme. Set in a rural community in Pennsylvania in mid-1970, the story builds around the lives of the two main characters, Arthur Parkinson and Annie Marchand. Arthur, who narrates the chapters about his part in this heartbreaking story, is a 14-year-old high school student. He is at that age when he is too old to be a boy but still too young to drive, who is dealing with his family’s slowly decaying break-up. At the same time, the narrator who gives us the picture of her dismal, failing marriage and careless lifestyle. She is a woman unknowingly spiraling into deeper danger as her estranged husband loses his grip. After attempting suicide he becomes zealously religious and tries to win back his wife and young daughter. The two characters live in the same town and have some tenuous connections: Marchand was Parkinson's beloved babysitter for a time; Parkinson's father worked briefly with Marchand's husband.
One of the many ways in which O'Nan succeeds in his narrative lies in his depiction of the casual acquaintance of small-town inhabitants who rub up against each other almost daily without ever achieving a deeper connection. Marchand's story is more direct than Arthur's as it is told in the present tense, and the fairly lengthy alternating passages play off each other in a stop-and- start rhythm. While these characters are not terribly self-aware, O'Nan never condescends to them or makes their troubles seem inconsequential, even at comical moments like Parkinson's first stabs at romance with an eerie twin who shares his bus stop or his visits to a therapist. The unnatural seems natural and the uncommon as common as it can be through O'Nan's elegant yet simple prose which leads the reader through the events that shaped these lives. I recommend this novel and author (and the film version as well). show less
The story links two families, almost indirectly, by a tragedy that affects them in show more enormously painful ways, it is a specific example of a universal theme. Set in a rural community in Pennsylvania in mid-1970, the story builds around the lives of the two main characters, Arthur Parkinson and Annie Marchand. Arthur, who narrates the chapters about his part in this heartbreaking story, is a 14-year-old high school student. He is at that age when he is too old to be a boy but still too young to drive, who is dealing with his family’s slowly decaying break-up. At the same time, the narrator who gives us the picture of her dismal, failing marriage and careless lifestyle. She is a woman unknowingly spiraling into deeper danger as her estranged husband loses his grip. After attempting suicide he becomes zealously religious and tries to win back his wife and young daughter. The two characters live in the same town and have some tenuous connections: Marchand was Parkinson's beloved babysitter for a time; Parkinson's father worked briefly with Marchand's husband.
One of the many ways in which O'Nan succeeds in his narrative lies in his depiction of the casual acquaintance of small-town inhabitants who rub up against each other almost daily without ever achieving a deeper connection. Marchand's story is more direct than Arthur's as it is told in the present tense, and the fairly lengthy alternating passages play off each other in a stop-and- start rhythm. While these characters are not terribly self-aware, O'Nan never condescends to them or makes their troubles seem inconsequential, even at comical moments like Parkinson's first stabs at romance with an eerie twin who shares his bus stop or his visits to a therapist. The unnatural seems natural and the uncommon as common as it can be through O'Nan's elegant yet simple prose which leads the reader through the events that shaped these lives. I recommend this novel and author (and the film version as well). show less
Set in a small town in the early 1970s, this is the story of Arty Parkinson, his messed up mother and his sad father, and his former babysitter, Annie, with her ne'er do well husband Glenn and her boyfriend Brock (who was also the boyfriend of her best friend Barb until, well, until Annie and Brock took up out at Susan's no-tell motel on the edge of town). Not one of the characters is happy but they aren't supposed to be. They have little about which to be happy, I suppose: jobs they don't love, unfaithful partners, and boring forms of entertainment. Arty, who is 14, plays in the high school marching band. He and his friends ditch school to smoke weed, sneak beers from their parents' cupboards, and wonder why the adults are all so show more incompetent. It's not that Arty doesn't love his parents; he does, and he wishes they would get back together. But being 14 is what it is and O'Nan captures the ambivalence and moodiness, undergirded by need for love and approval, that is the hallmark of early adolescence. When Arty's former babysitter is murdered, the not-so-shiny innocence of his youth is further tarnished.
A small detail quibble is that the description of the cash register at the Burger Hut where Arty works after school is out of sync with 1974. I worked in a fast food restaurant in 1976 and the kind of register Arty describes with a shrug had not yet been invented. Otherwise, the writing is pedestrian and the story, which admittedly pulled me in such that I did want to know what happened next, is dismal without redemption. Stewart O'Nan is an above-average observer of human nature and intimate relationships but this novel fell short of his capacity. show less
A small detail quibble is that the description of the cash register at the Burger Hut where Arty works after school is out of sync with 1974. I worked in a fast food restaurant in 1976 and the kind of register Arty describes with a shrug had not yet been invented. Otherwise, the writing is pedestrian and the story, which admittedly pulled me in such that I did want to know what happened next, is dismal without redemption. Stewart O'Nan is an above-average observer of human nature and intimate relationships but this novel fell short of his capacity. show less
A beautifully written, but quite sad, story of dysfunctional families, accidental death, murder and suicide.
Connections. Arthur is fourteen when he learns that his former babysitter has been killed. Only years later does he look back at this time and put some pieces together.
He had loved his babysitter, Annie, when he was young, and as a young teen the feelings were still there when he learns that Annie's toddler daughter has disappeared. He is in the high school band and the whole band is sent off to help with the search.
Annie had been struggling with her own problems, which is probably why she didn't think much about letting her little girl play in the snow alone. Having an affair with the husband of her best friend probably tops the list.
Arthur is just an observer. An aching, underachieving teen observer. Does his connection to Annie show more and what happens to her change him? show less
He had loved his babysitter, Annie, when he was young, and as a young teen the feelings were still there when he learns that Annie's toddler daughter has disappeared. He is in the high school band and the whole band is sent off to help with the search.
Annie had been struggling with her own problems, which is probably why she didn't think much about letting her little girl play in the snow alone. Having an affair with the husband of her best friend probably tops the list.
Arthur is just an observer. An aching, underachieving teen observer. Does his connection to Annie show more and what happens to her change him? show less
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Author Information
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Stewart O'Nan was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 4, 1961. He received a B. S. from Boston University in 1983 and received a M. F. A. in fiction from Cornell University in 1992. Before becoming a writer, he worked as a test engineer for Grumman Aerospace from 1984 to 1988. He has written several novels including The Speed Queen, A show more Prayer for the Dying, Last Night at the Lobster, The Circus Fire, and Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season. In the Walled City won the 1993 Due Heinz Literature Prize; Snow Angels won the 1993 Pirates Alley William Faulkner Prize; and The Names of the Dead won the 1996 Oklahoma Book Award. Snow Angels was made into a feature film in 2007. In 1996, he was listed as one of Granta's best young American novelists. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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rororo (22363)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Engel im Schnee
- Original title
- Snow Angels
- Original publication date
- 1994-10-01
- People/Characters
- Annie Marchand; Glenn Marchand; Tara Marchand; Warren Hardesty; Astrid Parkinson; Arthur Parkinson (show all 8); Clare Hardesty; May Van Dorn
- Important places
- Butler, Pennsylvania, USA
- Related movies
- Snow Angels (2007/I | IMDb)
- Epigraph
- Nothing is dearer than this small town main street,/where the venerable elm sickens, and hardens/with tarred cement, where no leaf/is born, or falls, or resists till winter./But I remember its former fertility,/how everything... (show all) came out clearly/in the hour of credulity/and young summer, when this street/was already somewhat overshaded,/and here at the altar of surrender,/I met you,/the death of thirst in my brief flesh. - Robert Lowell
- Dedication
- For my mother and father and John
- First words
- I was in the band the fall my father left, in the second row of trombones, in the middle because I was a freshman.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Yet at the same time I could do nothing to stop it, and that would not change for a very long time.
- Blurbers
- Stephanie Vaughn
- Original language*
- Amerikanisch
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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