A World Away: A Novel - Softcover

O'Nan, Stewart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805057757 ISBN 13: 9780805057751

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1999

Synopsis

In four highly acclaimed novels, Stewart O'Nan has proven himself among the most versatile of young writers, breathing new life into a wide range of literary traditions. A World Away is O'Nan at his most romantic and elegiac. By following the fortunes of the Langer family, whose oldest son, Rennie, is missing in action in the Pacific during World War II, O'Nan brilliantly captures the mood of this lost world and the changing fate of a country aware that when the war ends nothing will ever be the same.

About this title

Review

Set against the backdrop of World War II, Stewart O'Nan's book A World Away is a graceful exploration of a family facing a series of devastating events. Stripped of the ideal touchstones of domestic life--an accepting community, fidelity, a country at peace--the Langers take up temporary residence in Long Island with James's dying father. There each family member drifts into emotional isolation, fueled by uncertainty and worry. At the center of the storm is James, a former high school teacher "on the wrong side of fifty" who has committed the classic middle-aged sin of falling in love with a student, and his wife, Anne, angry and resentful at having been emotionally erased. Their oldest son, Rennie, has finally enlisted and is now a medic on the Pacific front, while his younger brother, Jay, haunted by violent dreams, imagines Rennie's face on the body of every dead Newsreel soldier. Another newer, and not quite accepted, member of the family, Rennie's teenage war bride, Dorothy, brings a poignant edge to the novel as we follow her to San Diego where she lives, alone and frightened, waiting for the birth of their child.

O'Nan's clean prose is a pleasure to read, and he infuses his characters' world with a quiet sensitivity, deftly capturing their loneliness. A World Away is a gentle and thoroughly compassionate portrait of a family stunned by change, struggling to regain its balance and its heart. Just as the Langers have no way of knowing if Rennie will come home, they are even more uncertain if they can, or will, return to each other. --Marianne Painter

About the Author

Stewart O'Nan's first collection of stories, In the Walled City, won the Drue Heinz Literary Award. He is the author of three previous novels, Snow Angels, The Names of the Dead, and The Speed Queen. His new novel, A Prayer for the Dying, will be published by Holt in April 1999.

About this edition

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0805057757
• ISBN 13: 9780805057751
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352