This first book-length study of Stewart O'Nan's work offers a comprehensive introduction to his writings and carefully examines recurring thematic concerns and stylistic characteristics of his novels. Heike Paul argues that O'Nan is not only a writer of popular fiction but also has developed into a major literary voice.

Heike Paul's study of Stewart O'Nan's oeuvre is more than a landmark in the scholarship on this prolific, versatile, and understudied author. While capturing crucial features of O'Nan's world, some of her critical insights--such as the notions of "the everyday gothic" and "literary care work"--offer perceptive new ways of understanding broader trends in contemporary fiction." — Donatella Izzo, University of Naples "L'Orientale""An introduction to Stewart O'Nan's novelistic rethinking of American mythology that is as shrewd as it is appealing. Uncovering the cultural and historical contexts to the everyday gothic and the literature of care informing his slice-of-life aesthetics, Heike Paul deftly draws us into his precarious fictional worlds. Her critical retellings of these stories makes them come alive on the page in a new light. This is, indeed the perfect invitation to read this versatile author." — Elisabeth Bronfen, University of Zurich"One of the chief distinctions of Understanding Stewart O'Nan, other than Heike Paul's superb prose and impressive scholarship, is the illuminating conjuncture each chapter draws between the changes in genre of O'Nan's novels and the shifting dispositions of American politics and popular culture." —Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth College"Heike Paul's careful and perceptive reading of Stewart O'Nan's work is a long overdue book-length appreciation of one of the major contemporary American writers too easily overlooked by academic critics. In her brilliant analysis, she reveals precarious situations experienced by O'Nan's small-town people in their everyday gothic and mythological worlds." —Alfred Hornung, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz"Steward O'Nan's greatest gift as a writer is his ability to attend to everyday, seemingly ordinary American life with great candor and compassion. Heike Paul's capacious and incisive study introduces readers to the significance of the various cultural myths O'Nan reinterprets throughout his extensive literary oeuvre." —Silvia Schultermandl, University of Graz