The Best of the Backlist: Stewart O'Nan
The Best of the Backlist
A look at worthy authors you may not know, focusing on their entire collection of in-stock backlist titles. The backlist is a great way to meet some new authors and get a sense of their work.
Stewart O’NanStewart O’Nan is well-known for his excellent non-fiction (including Circus Fire and Faithful, his ode to the Red Sox penned with Stephen King), but he has a deep collection of fiction that has no particular single theme. His most-known fiction work is Prayer for the Dying, a bleak and haunting novel set in post-Civil War Wisconsin which describes one man’s attempts to save his small town as an epidemic arrives, turning neighbors against each other. Snow Angels (on which the movie is based) tells the tale of one teen’s tumultuous family life and his troubled first love; O’Nan returns to place teenagers center stage in The Night Country, narrated by the departed spirits of several teens dead in a car wreck and focusing on those left behind. The Speed Queen is a gritty novel about a woman heading for the gallows and the crimes that put her there. It’s not for the faint of heart. On the other hand, Late Night at the Lobster is one of those nifty stories, peopled by lots of funky characters and set during one night (the last night a certain Red Lobster is open), that anyone could enjoy. The Good Wife and the newly-released (November, 2008) Songs for the Missing may be his best since Prayer. The Good Wife spans decades as a woman (young at the start) faithfully (but not foolishly) waits for her husband to be released from prison. If nothing else, the Good Wife teaches us that no marriage looks from the inside the way it does on the outside. Songs for the Missing is an involved and complex narrative about a family and their lives after the disappearance of their older daughter. You don’t know how the book will end, but the end is less important than the journey in getting to the end of the story—it’s engrossing and well-written.
