A World Away - Hardcover

O'Nan, Stewart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805057749 ISBN 13: 9780805057744

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 1998

Synopsis

A major new novel by the award-winning author named by Granta as one of America's best young writers. Set at a remote beachfront cottage in the Hamptons one summer during the Second World War, A World Away follows the fortunes of the Langer family, whose oldest son, Rennie, is missing in action in the Pacific theater. As we are soon aware, there is another battle raging at the same time, this one on the domestic front, as Anne and James Langer's marriage begins to unravel. In part to repay her husband for his affair with a student, Anne begins a clandestine romance with a soldier stationed at a nearby base. Yet all the passion and tenderness she finds with her lover is unable to ease Anne's empty ache from having her family torn apart.

Thousands of miles away, Rennie is wounded in the effort to drive the Japanese from the island of Attu in the Aleutians, as Dorothy, his young wife, gives birth alone in San Diego. When Rennie comes home, his spirit as wounded as his body, it's clear that James and Anne must repair their own broken lives if they're going to help their son heal and bring their family back together. A World Away is a rich, romantic story that has all the depth and generosity of spirit Stewart O'Nan's work is known for.

About this title

About the Author

Stewart O'Nan's first collection of stories, In the Walled City, won the Drue Heinz Literary Prize. He is the author of the novels Snow Angels, The Names of the Dead, The Speed Queen, among others. He lives in Connecticut.

Reviews

O'Nan's description of life in the face of daily devastation ... is unfaltering.

Granta named O'Nan one of the best new American writers, and his brilliantly executed fourth (after The Speed Queen, 1997) shows why, though it's also a long nostalgia bath, the novelistic equivalent of a loved old movie. In mid-WWII, high-school coach and history teacher James Langer takes his family to the old shore house in Hampton Bays, Long Island, where he himself grew up and where all will stay until the summer draws to its bittersweet end. It's not a pleasure-trip, though, since Langer's old father, who still lives in the house, is dying and needs looking after. And there are other uncertainties and sorrows that, like the old man's death, will be resolved one way or another by summer's close. It's nothing if not uncertain whether Langer's wife Anne can quit loathing him for his recent affair with a 16-year-old student or whether the marriage can survive her own avenging summertime fling. And, as regards survival, not only is there the emotional aftermath (especially hard on young Jay, 12 or so) of the family's having been ostracizednames called, backs turned, windows broken, worseas a result of older son Rennie's decision to enter the war as a conscientious objector, but there's the very real question whether Rennie now, a medic and missing in action, will come back alive at all, this happening right at the time his late-teen wife is having their first baby. Such melodrama by the carload, however, O'Nan handles with absolutely masterful eye and ear, putting the smallest period detail in its place (the Philco in the living room, horsemeat at the butcher, war news in the paper) and again and again striking perfect aesthetic sparks from even this soft old stone: ``Anne. . . sat fanning herself with an old Collier's,'' ``The night was chilly, a cold smell of clamshells in the wind.'' Hands-down winner of best novel of the year award except that that year might be 1947, say, or 1948. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

[O'Nan] excises the potential fluff with his lyrical but economic prose and provides the occasional punch to offset the potentially sappy plot line. In O'Nan's sure hands, simple plot conventions transcend the label melodrama and approach truth.... In A World Away O'Nan has constructed a literary novel with the grip of a page-turner.... The conceit is never sublimated to the dense and fascinating tangle of emotions; the plot line continues to push ahead and the reader, caught up in the anxiety of the Langer family as a whole and the individual pathologies that drive each member, is invested entirely in Rennie's fate.

Granta-listed O'Nan (Snow Angels) fulfills his promise with this affecting and nuanced examination of family alliances tested by infidelity, illness and the pervasive impact of WWII. James Langer, repentant over an affair with one of his high-school students, tries to reconcile himself with his wife, Anne, who responds with silence, fury and a lover of her own. Some rapprochement seems less possible yet all the more necessary as the strain on the marriage increases. As the novel opens, the couple and their tepidly unhappy adolescent son, Jay, have come to the Hamptons to care for James's father, felled by a stroke. Yet the wound that runs deepest is the uncertain fate of their older son, Rennie, a former conscientious objector who became a medic and is now missing in action in the Pacific. The potential for melodrama increases as Rennie's wife, Dorothy, joins the family in the Hamptons after giving birth to their child. Yet O'Nan avoids that pitfall by focusing on the continually shifting tensions and alliances that animate the family: Anne's ambivalence about forgiving her husband; James's anxieties about the damaged family around him; and young Jay's growing confidence as he cares for his ailing grandfather. The narrative's subtle balance falters a bit with Rennie's homecoming; frustratingly, O'Nan holds the returned soldier somewhat aloof from the reader, rigorously keeping the focus on James and Ann. Still, this is a compassionate, acutely observant and deftly understated novel that evokes the longings that tug at one's heart as it unfurls in elegant prose. 30,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Langer family, suffering during World War II from the emotional and physical fallout of infidelity, terminal illness, and combat injuries, moves back to the rundown home of the dying Langer grandfather, resigned to their misery yet hoping for a miracle of recovery. Ann Langer, bitter over husband James's recent affair with one of his high school students and mortified by son Rennie's conscientious objector status, barely speaks to the former and refuses to write to the latter, who is serving as a medic in the Aleutian Islands. Trained as a nurse, Anne finds both dispassionate solace tending to the needs of her father-in-law and passionate escape in the arms of a soldier stationed nearby. The Langers' young son Jay is tortured by his brother's absence, his grandfather's illness, and the raw disintegration of his parents' marriage. Enter Rennie's wife and newborn daughter and later Rennie himself, an injured wreck of his former self. Extraordinary for his sensitive climb into the minds and hearts of his characters, especially the deeply flawed Anne, O'Nan (Snow Angels, LJ 11/15/94) stuns his readers with his sudden dips in time, creating a compelling rhythm of power and frailty against an onslaught of hurt. Beautifully done.?Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In a sluggish novel from a usually compelling author, domestic tensions on the home front during World War II are at the center. O'Nan's specific focus is the shaky marriage of James and Anne, whose son, Rennie, is missing in action overseas. James has had an affair with a student; Anne turns the tables and has a liaison with a soldier stationed locally. James and Anne's recovery as a married couple is taking considerable time. Meanwhile, Rennie's wife faces childbirth without him; when he does return from battle, they must reacquaint themselves. With their family together again and growing, James and Anne, now more than ever, must find new grounding to secure their marriage. For all its luscious detail and careful attention to language, or perhaps because of those two factors, the novel remains stiff. The characters' plights seem real but, at the same time, seem recycled from many other wartime novels and even movies. Still, O'Nan is gathering a substantial readership, so expect demand for his latest. Brad Hooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805057749
• ISBN 13: 9780805057744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 338