“Ocean State”, by Stewart O'Nan, translated from English (United States) by Cyrielle Ayakatsikas, L'Olivier, 290 p., €23.50, digital €16.
On the map of the United States, Rhode Island is the tiniest piece of the puzzle: a tiny rectangle wedged between Connecticut and Massachusetts, with the Atlantic Ocean as its final border. Starting from this confetti of America, Stewart O'Nan zoomed in again until stopping on one of the most cramped localities in the State, where he hatched a drama almost too big for the place. Everything is so ordinary in the village of Ashaway, so familiar, bordering on insignificance, that the murder of a teenage girl by her rival seems barely conceivable. Yet it is from this very banality that the unimaginable arises, and from it also that Stewart O'Nan brilliantly draws the substance of his new novel, Ocean State.
The writer's narrative skill was evident from his beginnings, with Angels in the snow, Speed Queen or An evil that spreads terror (L’Olivier, 1997, 1998 and 2001). Born in 1961 in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), O'Nan is a virtuoso of storytelling, whose novels generally demonstrate inventiveness. Although they almost never stray far from the East Coast, many of them offer real literary explorations, varying the ways of telling, but also of keeping the reader in suspense. There is also some mystery in the way the author ofOcean State manages to build what the Anglo-Saxons call a « page turner » from such prosaic material, apparently without surprise.
Especially since the writer immediately renounces the strings of suspense – he gives the key to the plot from the first sentence. “When I was in eighth grade, my sister was involved in the murder of a young girl. » The narrator, Marie, is the only one to speak in the first person in this kaleidoscopic story where the author slips in turn into the heads of several protagonists, all women. The wheel turns, the crystals of the kaleidoscope change shape and color, but the teenager invariably finds herself in the middle of a “shadow geometry” similar to that projected by car headlights on Halloween.
Teenage girls hooked on their phones
Around her, the world constantly teeters on the edge of lies: “All three of us were good at hiding”observes the young girl about herself, her sister Angel and Carol, their mother, who tries to take advantage of what remains of her youth to maintain a chaotic love life. Hanging on their phones, teenage girls cry, rage or hope according to the messages posted on social networks which end up giving them the illusion of a life more desirable than theirs.
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