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Summary
Summary
Selected by Granta as one of America's Best Young Novelists, Stewart O'Nan has created award-winning fiction that's been hailed by critics for its evocative lyricism and finely wrought characters. In his new novel, Everyday People, O'Nan brings together the stories of the residents of one Pittsburgh neighborhood to create a lush, dramatic portrait that vividly captures the experience of the day-to-day struggle that is life in urban America.
Set in the African-American community of East Liberty during one fateful week in the early fall of 1998, the novel centers around Chris "Crest" Tolbert -- an eighteen-year-old left paralyzed and haunted by the loss of his best friend after a recent accident -- and weaves together the lives of friends and family, lovers and strangers, and their emotions, memories, and dreams. There is Vanessa, Crest's estranged girlfriend and the mother of his son, who finds her life at a crossroads as she comes to terms with her former boyfriend's injuries, while her viewof the world is being transformed by a night class on African-American culture. There is Crest's brother Eugene, nicknamed "U", an ex-con turned
Author Notes
Stewart O'Nan was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 4, 1961. He received a B. S. from Boston University in 1983 and received a M. F. A. in fiction from Cornell University in 1992. Before becoming a writer, he worked as a test engineer for Grumman Aerospace from 1984 to 1988.
He has written several novels including The Speed Queen, A Prayer for the Dying, Last Night at the Lobster, The Circus Fire, and Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season. In the Walled City won the 1993 Due Heinz Literature Prize; Snow Angels won the 1993 Pirates Alley William Faulkner Prize; and The Names of the Dead won the 1996 Oklahoma Book Award. Snow Angels was made into a feature film in 2007. In 1996, he was listed as one of Granta's best young American novelists.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The protean O'Nan seems determined to touch nearly every facet of human experience in a remarkable variety of times and places. In such brilliant novels as Snow Angel and A Prayer for the Dying, he's created distinctive, almost palpable worlds rich in moral complexities. But while his apparent purpose in writing this new novel (after the nonfiction The Circus Fire) is commendable, this story of African-Americans victimized by poverty and racial bias does not develop the mesmerizing narrative tension that distinguishes his previous work. The characters whose intertwined lives are presented in short chapters are residents of a declining African-American community near Pittsburgh, where drug use offers escape from teenage boredom and a lack of job opportunities; gang wars and violent crime inevitably follow. O'Nan's empathy for his characters conveys their sense of frustration and powerlessness, the restlessness of teenagers and the older generations' stoic dignity. Each character exists in a state of grief. At 18, Chris "Crest" Tolbert is trying to adjust to life in a wheelchair, from an accident in which he and his best buddy, Bean, fell off a thruway overpass while drawing graffiti. Bean died, and his grandmother, Miss Fisk, is admired by the community for her Job-like endurance. Chris's father is hiding a homosexual love for a younger man; his older brother accepted religion in prison and is striving to keep others from going down the path he followed. Nobody is innately bad; each is a victim of the system or of life's ironies. O'Nan's sensitive portraits of these people plumbs the depths of their longings for a decent break but, oddly for this always intense author, the narrative lacks vitality. Earnest, even heartfelt, the novel seems studied and its plot too obviously charted. Still, O'Nan gets the voices just right, especially the homeboy argot and casual obscenities, and flashes of fine writing redeem this admirable but disappointing effort by an outstanding writer. Agent, David Gernert. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
ONans aptly titled sixth novel explores a Pittsburgh neighborhood with the same nonjudgmental empathy and respect for ordinary folks already evident in his first, Snow Angels (1994). People in East Liberty have very mixed feelings about the Martin Robinson Express Busway. It will supposedly bring jobs, and its named after a black congressman whos done a lot for the community, but itll also cut off the African-American area from the rest of Pittsburgh. Moreover, it was the scene of a bad accident before it even opened. Spray-painting an unfinished walkway, two teenaged graffiti artists fell: Bean was killed, and his friend Crest was paralyzed. Crest is one of the central characters in a narrative that roves through East Liberty to weave individual memories and dreams into a collective portrait. Crests father, Harold, struggles to get over an affair with a younger man, while wife Jackie seethes. Older brother Eugene, recently out of prison and newly religious, is trying to build a life without drugs or violence, though he fails to save his junkie friend, Nene, or Nenes angry younger brother. Vanessa, who broke up with Crest shortly before the accident, raises their son and holds down a job while taking a college course on African-American culture more out of a sense of duty than any burning interest. Crest, though never a good student, has a stronger sense of his heritage; he plans to portray members of the community and other blacks who have given their lives for their people in a painting that ultimately becomes the authors moving symbol of arts power to celebrate the spirit of those society prefers to ignore. Although ONan limns Crests consciousness in the hip-hop rhythms of young urban black speech, he chronicles other characters thoughts in more conventional language, emphasizing the variety of African-American lives and the similarity of their aspirations to those of any other ethnic group. Quietly passionate, imbued with a subtle understanding of how the personal and political intertwine: another fine effort from an always-intriguing writer.
Booklist Review
O'Nan proves once again how much he deserved being named one of the best young novelists in the U.S. today by Granta magazine. Each new novel proves his inventiveness, versatility, and wondrous, chameleon-like ability to employ a wide variety of voices. His latest novel takes a form that is increasingly popular these days: a cycle of vignettes about a group of people whose lives intersect on different occasions and on various levels. In this case, O'Nan concentrates on a black neighborhood in Pittsburgh called East Liberty and, in particular, a teenage boy named Chris who is confined to a wheelchair as a result of an accident in which his good friend was killed. Chris deals with the fact that "a lot of being in the chair is just waiting around" and that he is now impotent with his girlfriend, Vanessa, who is pregnant with his child. Chris' brother, Eugene, is now out of jail and into "Jesus stuff." Chris' father strays from his wife for homosexual encounters, and Chris' mother's cousin, Sister Marita, works for the phone company by day and on her own time counsels troubled people in the church basement. These are the major characters that circle through O'Nan's riveting narrative, which, like a well-composed musical piece, achieves a unity of effect in its depiction of a neighborhood and the everyday people who live there. --Brad Hooper
Library Journal Review
Set in a black neighborhood of Pittsburgh during one eventful week in 1998, this novel focuses on a group of residents struggling to survive amidst a landscape of poverty and gang violence. The Tolbert family is the central focus of this tableau. Chris is an 18-year-old graffiti artist paralyzed in a fall that killed his best friend. Brother Eugene is an ex-con trying to go straight. Father Harold is torn between a family that needs him and a gay lover with whom he finds fulfillment. Around them is Vanessa, Chris's girlfriend and the mother of his child, whose study of black history forms a key thread of the novel. O'Nan (A Prayer for the Dying) has stories to tell about so many characters that he has trouble resolving them all. Yet it is precisely the characters and their stories that a reader will remember from this often sad, sometimes hopeful, and always richly rendered tale. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/00.]ÄLawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
