SNOW ANGELS - Stewart O'Nan (March 13/08)

This brisk yet sporadically pretentious debut follows two separate storylines that kind of converge, and O'Nan does a nice job of establishing the various characters. There are a few really engaging passages - particularly the sequence in which everybody tries to track down the missing kid - but O'Nan tends to bog down his prose with overly flowery descriptions. **1/2 out of ****