Snow Angels review

Snow Angel Book Review

Josephine Bush

January 2011

Snow Angels is a literal merit novel which was written in 1994 and was the first of many novels to come from the world-renowned author Stewart O’nan. Stewart O’nan resides in Connecticut. He was born in Pittsburgh and grew up following a very normal childhood. Once he was 18 years old, he attended Boston University and a few decades later little did he know he would come out with his first novel, Snow Angels . The novel is written in one format, from two points of view. The entire book has you wondering why these stories are written side by side. Snow Angels, is written so any reader can relate to it and feel a connection. The problems that both significant roles suffer are day to day scenarios, where life throws you a fast pitch and you just weren’t ready. Stewart O’nan wrote a real novel in a non-fiction composition.

Snow Angels is a tale that shows two different families. You get to know each of them and their circumstances, good and bad and how they go about their day-to-day lives. Both families were affected by one tragedy that tore them even further apart.

During the mid 1970s, peace and love, was in the air but the Pennsylvania setting was cold and quiet. In a small town, Stewart O’nan tells the main characters’ stories from their point of views. Arthur Parkinson is a teenager who is similar to every other teenage boy. He is curious about girls, has issues with his parents, plays around with cigarettes and marijuana. Arthur has an older sister who has taken her life into her own hands. Astrid is abroad and serving the country. She worries greatly about her family, but always tries to scold her younger brother to cooperate with their parents. At the same time, the reader follows the life of Annie Marchand. She used to be Arthur’s babysitter, his first young crush, but now she is a young adult, who is tackling marriage and a lifestyle that she may not have been ready for.

After Arthur’s and his sister Astrid’s parents split, he begins to live a very different life. Together the family got by and made a good amount of income to put an adequate amount of food on the table, but now they have moved to a worse part of town, where Arthur is often embarrassed to tell people of his situation nowadays. His dad has no real place of residence and goes in and out of hardships with another woman. Everything seems to be hard. Arthur has a crush on a girl and does not know how to handle the circumstance, as well as treat his parents, school seems to become less of his priorities and so does band. He began to start skipping practices which lead to the worse thing of both his and his previous babysitter’s life. Every point brings the reader to have some sympathy for the characters. He has seen something that would frighten anyone alive and would break Annie’s heart apart.

Both of the main characters are growing up. Arthur in his adolescent stage and Annie in her young adulthood. She grows up to marry, who she thought she was in love with Glen Marchand. After despair, lack of loyalty, distrust and other common marriage problems, they also decide to end there marriage even though they have conceived a young daughter together. Glen still loves her, but she goes as far as to sleep with one of her best friend’s boyfriends. Then from time-to-time, she simply leaves her daughter, neglecting her duties as a mother. She has truly sinned and makes a hazard through out the entire book. But when her daughter turns up missing and later is found dead. Who is to blame? Could it be her ex-husband, someone she knew or even someone who just happened to sweep her daughter away? She would never find out herself.