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Title details for Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan - Available

Snow Angels

by Stewart O'Nan
Malcolm Hillgartner
Audiobook
2 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 3 copies available

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 belonging, told in a spare, translucent, and unexpectedly tender voice.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 1, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781481551489
      • File size: 184457 KB
      • Duration: 06:24:17

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Text Difficulty: 9-12

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Stewart O'Nan's heartbreaking and poetic story of a man recounting the events of his teenage years, most notably the death of his former baby-sitter, is beautifully read by narrator Malcom Hillgartner in a rich performance that resonates with melancholy and loss. Hillgartner's deep tone is so engaging and earnest it makes the story leap to life inside the listeners' collective imaginations. As Arthur Parkinson, he is thorough and complete in his reading, realistically assuming the identity of a middle-aged man searching for answers from his dreary past. There is little in the way of performance here, not in any obvious sense, but what Hillgartner lacks in variety and theatrics he more than provides in believability and emotion. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 3, 1994
      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.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 4, 1995
      First novelist O'Nan links the troubled family life of a teenage boy with the events leading up to the violent death of his beloved former baby-sitter.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:9-12

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