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Everyday People
Stewart O'Nan's critically acclaimed novel Everyday People brings together the stories of the people of an African-American Pittsburgh neighborhood during one fateful week in the early fall of 1998. Vibrant, poignant, and brilliantly rendered, Everyday People is a lush, dramatic portrait that vividly captures the experience of the day-to-day struggle that is life in urban America. "A unique and tantalizing novel that celebrates the lives of everyday people in an extraordinary way." -- Mike Maiello, San Francisco Chronicle "An important book ... Beautiful, heartbreaking, haunting." -- Manuel Luis Martinez, Chicago Tribune
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
24 people are currently reading
319 people want to read
About the author
Stewart O'Nan
82 books1,354 followersStewart O'Nan is the author of eighteen novels, including Emily, Alone; Last Night at the Lobster; A Prayer for the Dying; Snow Angels; and the forthcoming Ocean State, due out from Grove/Atlantic on March 8th, 2022.
With Stephen King, I’ve also co-written Faithful, a nonfiction account of the 2004 Boston Red Sox, and the e-story “A Face in the Crowd.”
You can catch me at stewart-onan.com, on Twitter @stewartonan and on Facebook @stewartONanAuthor
With Stephen King, I’ve also co-written Faithful, a nonfiction account of the 2004 Boston Red Sox, and the e-story “A Face in the Crowd.”
You can catch me at stewart-onan.com, on Twitter @stewartonan and on Facebook @stewartONanAuthor
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
November 30, 2008
Knowing this O'Nan book takes place locally (East Liberty and surrounding neighborhoods) I was curious to see how O'Nan tackled the job - would he write as a white man, looking at things from a white perspective? Or would he write as a black man, as someone living in East Liberty? He chose to take the latter route, which is something that is difficult to do without falling into stereotype. While O'Nan was not able to completely step into the text of urban black 'Burghers convincingly, he did do a better job than most others would have.
Chris (nicknamed Crest) is in a wheelchair after an accident on the new busway being built to separate East Liberty from the rest of Pittsburgh. His best friend Ben (nicknamed Bean) dies. Each chapter of the book is a story told from another point of view, not necessarily dealing primarily with the story of the accident on the busway, but all in some way related to one or both boys. The busway itself is the central character tying them all together, these "everyday people", from Chris in his wheelchair to his older brother, an ex-con-turned-born-again-Christian. Their stories are the ones no one hears, especially as the busway was being built, secluding them (as the hope went) from the rest of society.
Not my favorite of O'Nan's, but better than I anticipated. The first chapter told from Crest's point of view made me a little hesitant, but the rest of the chapters flowed nicely and created a cohesive story. The individual stories are heartbreaking at times and at other times familiar to me in the faces of the people I see every day on the bus as well. This was quite a brave attempt for O'Nan, and nice to see a different part of Pittsburgh represented for a change.
Chris (nicknamed Crest) is in a wheelchair after an accident on the new busway being built to separate East Liberty from the rest of Pittsburgh. His best friend Ben (nicknamed Bean) dies. Each chapter of the book is a story told from another point of view, not necessarily dealing primarily with the story of the accident on the busway, but all in some way related to one or both boys. The busway itself is the central character tying them all together, these "everyday people", from Chris in his wheelchair to his older brother, an ex-con-turned-born-again-Christian. Their stories are the ones no one hears, especially as the busway was being built, secluding them (as the hope went) from the rest of society.
Not my favorite of O'Nan's, but better than I anticipated. The first chapter told from Crest's point of view made me a little hesitant, but the rest of the chapters flowed nicely and created a cohesive story. The individual stories are heartbreaking at times and at other times familiar to me in the faces of the people I see every day on the bus as well. This was quite a brave attempt for O'Nan, and nice to see a different part of Pittsburgh represented for a change.
June 4, 2008
I'm not sure, entirely, why I liked this book so much. It's about poor, inner-city African Americans--couples, grandparents, young men, gay men, etc.--trying to get through their lives. I can't speak to it's veracity, not being part of any of those communities, but it "felt" true. I think more than anything, the book is filled with folks I came to care about and it speaks to their resiliance.
December 13, 2007
Having spent a year living on the edge of East Liberty in Pittsburgh and walking all the streets the book describes (only two years after the book takes place), it had an extra power. On the other hand, it also revealed the lives of "everyday people" in that neighborhood that I never got to know or fully understand...lives filled with pain, injustice, love, revenge and sacrifice. And for that particularly, I am grateful for the power of this book.
November 25, 2021
eponymous sentence:
p206: Looks around, doesn't see anyone famous here, no Julian Bonds or Shirley Chisholms, no Paul Robesons, just folks, everyday people.
Not too bad, just not my cup of tea.
p206: Looks around, doesn't see anyone famous here, no Julian Bonds or Shirley Chisholms, no Paul Robesons, just folks, everyday people.
Not too bad, just not my cup of tea.
February 19, 2019
An interesting book especially since I am from this area.
Want to read
August 2, 2011Stephen King friend and recommended author.
March 15, 2019
When I started reading this deftly written, interwoven story about working folks in Pittsburgh I struggled a bit with the question of appropriateness. Namely should — or could — a white author, even one from Pittsburgh like Stewart O'Nan, write almost wholly about black characters.
(I think this was heightened a bit more because I somehow mistakenly thought this was O'Nan's debut; which seemed an overly-ambitious and even uncharacteristically hubristic attempt. Seeing now that this comes at least a decade into his career it makes much more sense.)
Thankfully, and enjoyably, O'Nan largely pulls it off. (or seems to to this white reader who may admittedly have a blind spot here).
As with his other novels about everyday people O'Nan here largely focuses on universal themes and struggles — without a literal or figurative whitewashing: desire, loss, responsibility, parenthood, fear and, of course, work. O'Nan's strength as a writer and storyteller is that in doing so he both reveals that very universality without stripping away any of the nuance, individuality or humanity of his characters.
And what a tremendous last sentence.
With every O’Nan book I read I become a bigger and bigger fan — and think he’s pulled ahead of Marge Piercy as my favorite writer.
(I think this was heightened a bit more because I somehow mistakenly thought this was O'Nan's debut; which seemed an overly-ambitious and even uncharacteristically hubristic attempt. Seeing now that this comes at least a decade into his career it makes much more sense.)
Thankfully, and enjoyably, O'Nan largely pulls it off. (or seems to to this white reader who may admittedly have a blind spot here).
As with his other novels about everyday people O'Nan here largely focuses on universal themes and struggles — without a literal or figurative whitewashing: desire, loss, responsibility, parenthood, fear and, of course, work. O'Nan's strength as a writer and storyteller is that in doing so he both reveals that very universality without stripping away any of the nuance, individuality or humanity of his characters.
And what a tremendous last sentence.
With every O’Nan book I read I become a bigger and bigger fan — and think he’s pulled ahead of Marge Piercy as my favorite writer.
January 21, 2021
Coming from someone who has never been to the US and has virtually no idea how life would be in this corner of the country I assume this is more or less acurrate? It was well written, I liked the storytelling and everything- I don't really have to add anything to the reviews here.
HOWEVER: who on earth had the idea to put a white dude on the cover of the German edition of this? Seriously? I mean, come on ...
HOWEVER: who on earth had the idea to put a white dude on the cover of the German edition of this? Seriously? I mean, come on ...
April 3, 2018
Everyday People is set in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1998. The story is told through perspectives of a number of characters, giving the reader a broader perspective of the characters and neighborhood. It is a very fast, interesting read. 3.5 stars.
June 26, 2019
At times hard to read, and certainly not uplifting, but so very well written.
January 6, 2021
People being people- at their best, worst, ugliest, most hopeful and most human. Beautiful.
October 22, 2014
This novel explores the lives of the people who live in Spofford, a traditionally African-American part of Pittsburgh, and the challenges they face in a neighborhood blighted by civic neglect and mismanagement.
O’Nan uses interlocking narratives, each chapter able to stand alone as a short story, to bring to life the people who live in Spofford. The first chapter focuses on Chris, who fell off a new bridge while tagging it with his friend Bean. Bean dies, and Chris loses the use of his limbs, wheelchair bound for life. This leads into the next story, about a telephone operator who consoles Chris’s mom who thinks her husband Harold is having an affair. The operator feels lonely and her dog is dying. Each story picks out a character or a situation in the previous narrative and creates a complicated canvas that illuminates that person’s life, their everyday trials, what they wish for, and what they do not receive.
The first and last chapters are told in the slang of the gangs of Spofford. The narrator is a young man, but it’s not clear that he’s someone we’ve seen. Instead, he tells us about Chris and Bean and talks about the neighborhood, its politics and its history. Spofford was middle class, and now its drained, marginalized, and prey to violence and bored young people who are hurting and willing to take risks. The other chapters come from a more accessible narrative voice which is interested in observing the people in their homes, in their private moments, and interacting with the neighborhood at large.
At the beginning of the book, the reader learns that Spofford hasn’t always been poor, but poverty has come as a result of a bypass built to get people from the white suburbs into the city. The bypass has divided Spofford from Pittsburgh, so that it’s cut off from commerce. It’s become a stagnant backwater, and dies slowly. Then we begin to focus more tightly on Chris’s family, and the desires that pull them apart: Harold for life as a gay man, his son Eugene for a straight life that avoids gangs and prison, Chris to re-make himself as an artist, and Jackie to keep her family together. But what’s happened to their neighborhood puts pressure on the family with Chris in a wheelchair and Eugene trying to stay free of the gangs. Ultimately, these forces provoke lasting changes that affect their lives.
O’Nan uses interlocking narratives, each chapter able to stand alone as a short story, to bring to life the people who live in Spofford. The first chapter focuses on Chris, who fell off a new bridge while tagging it with his friend Bean. Bean dies, and Chris loses the use of his limbs, wheelchair bound for life. This leads into the next story, about a telephone operator who consoles Chris’s mom who thinks her husband Harold is having an affair. The operator feels lonely and her dog is dying. Each story picks out a character or a situation in the previous narrative and creates a complicated canvas that illuminates that person’s life, their everyday trials, what they wish for, and what they do not receive.
The first and last chapters are told in the slang of the gangs of Spofford. The narrator is a young man, but it’s not clear that he’s someone we’ve seen. Instead, he tells us about Chris and Bean and talks about the neighborhood, its politics and its history. Spofford was middle class, and now its drained, marginalized, and prey to violence and bored young people who are hurting and willing to take risks. The other chapters come from a more accessible narrative voice which is interested in observing the people in their homes, in their private moments, and interacting with the neighborhood at large.
At the beginning of the book, the reader learns that Spofford hasn’t always been poor, but poverty has come as a result of a bypass built to get people from the white suburbs into the city. The bypass has divided Spofford from Pittsburgh, so that it’s cut off from commerce. It’s become a stagnant backwater, and dies slowly. Then we begin to focus more tightly on Chris’s family, and the desires that pull them apart: Harold for life as a gay man, his son Eugene for a straight life that avoids gangs and prison, Chris to re-make himself as an artist, and Jackie to keep her family together. But what’s happened to their neighborhood puts pressure on the family with Chris in a wheelchair and Eugene trying to stay free of the gangs. Ultimately, these forces provoke lasting changes that affect their lives.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2013
Stewart O'Nan is one of my favorite writers and no one does a better job of evoking time and place. His books are often set in Pittsburgh and this one is about the urban experience of a neighborhood called East Liberty in 1998. This is mostly a black urban neighborhood and I felt a little distanced. The street vernacular was difficult for me to understand and there isn't one main story. There are several affecting characters and the chapters jump from one to the other. I had a hard time following them. Chris (aka Crest) is a 17 year old paralyzed from the waist down after an accident. His brother Eugene is born-again after a stint in prison. Their father Harold is a closeted homosexual. Vanessa is Chris' ex-girlfriend and the mother of their child. There are other beautifully drawn characters... Andre, Miss Fisk, Jackie and Tony.
A new expressway is scheduled to open and it will literally cut off the neighborhood from the rest of the area. This illustrates the powerlessness of the people of East Liberty as they are not a part of the political environment and can do nothing to stop the "progress." This is a tough, gritty story about secrets and about hope and despair. The ending surprised me and left me devastated.
A new expressway is scheduled to open and it will literally cut off the neighborhood from the rest of the area. This illustrates the powerlessness of the people of East Liberty as they are not a part of the political environment and can do nothing to stop the "progress." This is a tough, gritty story about secrets and about hope and despair. The ending surprised me and left me devastated.
January 22, 2008
Told from the perspective of a different character in each chapter (but always in the 3rd person), Everyday People brings together a cast of characters of varying ages, each with their own stories, but all part of an overarching narrative. There's a certain underlying sadness in nearly every sentence in this book and that didn't keep me from liking it, but at times I could've used a laugh instead of an oh-I-know-what-that-feels-like chuckle of empathy. Still, from chapter to chapter I enjoyed slipping into each character's skin and imagining myself an elderly widower, a newly religious reformed gangbanger, a teenage mother, a congressman, and a wheelchair-bound graffiti artist among others.
June 18, 2012
This is the third Stewart O'Nan book that I've read in the past year and I keep waiting to be disappointed or unimpressed and I'm starting to realize that may be a fruitless endeavor.
Where Last Night at the Lobster was a call back to my days working in retail and the monotony and drama that accompanied it, The Night Country spoke to survivor's guilt and the cloud left on those who are left behind. Everyday People is unlike both of these in it's own way. I was hesitant to praise a book written in the first person about African Americans by a white guy but he again steps into the lives of these characters and makes you feel their pain, their loneliness, their struggle to move on after a tragic accident.
If you haven't read anything by O'Nan, do yourself a favor and try one... any one.
Where Last Night at the Lobster was a call back to my days working in retail and the monotony and drama that accompanied it, The Night Country spoke to survivor's guilt and the cloud left on those who are left behind. Everyday People is unlike both of these in it's own way. I was hesitant to praise a book written in the first person about African Americans by a white guy but he again steps into the lives of these characters and makes you feel their pain, their loneliness, their struggle to move on after a tragic accident.
If you haven't read anything by O'Nan, do yourself a favor and try one... any one.
August 12, 2014
A curious book, well written, but the story-telling is either poorly paced or not there. Good picture of a northern city (in this case, Pittsburgh) at the end of the last century from the point of view of several residents of a neglected neighborhood. As with all of O'Nan's novels, the characters are full, well-drawn, full of moral ambiguity, thoroughly human, but the book --initially-- seems more a series of character sketches than a novel. For the most part, if finally pulls together in the last thirty-forty pages, and the last (two page) chapter is pitch-perfect. Difficult book, but worth the effort.
July 30, 2010
Good book. Not quite a 4 star, more like 3.5. At any rate, typically good O'nan, very realistic protrayal of American poor, this time in Pittsburgh rather than NY state. A well written character study, with each chapter written from the perspective of a different character tied together by a thread of a plot. Had the sense of always building to something, but in the end, really just ended -- although that is somewhat a trait of O'nan as well.
March 12, 2012
This was really a moving portrait of this small neighborhood of Pittsburgh, one that I didn't really get to know during my time living in the city. The plot and characters are relatively simple but well-realized. I read this following O'Nan's Songs for the Missing and I am quite impressed by his versatility as a writer.
February 27, 2012
(Read it on San Juan Island – Friday Harbor House)
Stewart O’Nan. Everyday People. New York: Grove Press, 2001.
Didn’t like it. Only read the first chapter or so. I couldn’t settle into the “black speak.” It didn’t flow. Maybe it was accurate but I just couldn’t relax to it and his story didn’t pull me in fast enough. So this one of O’Nan I won’t read.
Stewart O’Nan. Everyday People. New York: Grove Press, 2001.
Didn’t like it. Only read the first chapter or so. I couldn’t settle into the “black speak.” It didn’t flow. Maybe it was accurate but I just couldn’t relax to it and his story didn’t pull me in fast enough. So this one of O’Nan I won’t read.
April 22, 2011
Though he has published a lot, this is a new author to me. This is a moving story about family and neighbors struggling to get out of the ghetto of their lives.The author has the ability to pull you in to all the angst, love and strength of the characters. It made me want to continue reading his works.
Read
October 13, 2012I have loved most all of the books I have read by O'Nan, but I am really having a difficult time with this one. I am having trouble understanding the "black-speak" (please, I don't want to offend anyone) and it is just not a fun book to read because of it. I think I am giving up on it at the moment. Maybe I will return to it at a later time when I feel I have more patience in deciphering it.
March 6, 2012
Skip it. I read Stewart O'Nan's Last Nigh at the Lobster book and really like it a lot. This book was not good, though. The whole thing was disjointed and it was really hard to get through. Don't read it.
January 15, 2008
Much better and less predictable than I expected.
August 8, 2017
Love these hometown stories!!
March 6, 2011
DNF 104 pages in.
March 5, 2016
Deeply depressing with no let up.
July 19, 2013
used audiobook
Want to read
June 22, 20101st edition
August 11, 2013
The book may have had high ambitions ... hard to tell, because it's a shapeless mess.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews