Ocean State

by Jean McGarry

The stories of Ocean State roll over the reader like a wave. Family pleasures, marriage, the essential moments and mysteries of a seemingly ordinary world that break into magical territory before we can brace ourselves―Jean McGarry puts us in life’s rough seas with what the New York Times has called a “deft, comic, and devastatingly precise” hand.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published July 27, 2010

About the author

American novelist and short story writer, a Professor at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars.

Reviews

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can love and jealousy cause terrible things to happen? We meet 2 high school girls who live in Rhode Island and see how their rivalry will play out into 2 ruined lives. We meet Birdy, who is murdered .because of jealousy, Angel who is the rival and murdered, Carol-Angle's mother who can't seem to sow her girls morality and Marie, the youngest daughter. Through Marie we learn what is going on between the girls, her mother, and the murder. I found there were some interesting moments in this story, but for the most part, I did not enjoy reading it.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt to me like reading a foreign language, one in which I'm not quite fluent. In each of the stories I could sense there was something I was not getting, a depth that was not resonating. I should have liked it better but kept missing the punchlines. My probably unreasonable expectation of a Rhode Island tilt to the stories was also largely disappointed.