A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD
By Therese Anne Fowler
A Good Neighborhood is a simple book to read. It’s short, it has an interesting and relevant plot, the characters are believable. A simple book to read – and a complex storyline to absorb.
When I first started reading, I was bemused by the narrator, who is apparently one of the neighbors, although exactly which one is a mystery. This tactic is captivating and kept me wondering throughout the story, but in no way overshadows the tale itself, which could have come right out of any current headlines.
Valerie Alston-Holt lives in an established, diverse neighborhood with her eighteen-year old son, Xavier. The area is on the cusp of becoming a highly desirable place for the wealthy to move into and to rearrange to their own style. In fact, that’s exactly what happens when the Whitman family demolishes the house and the vegetation on the lot adjacent to Valerie and builds a beautiful, brand-new home and pool. Brad Whitman is a newly wealthy businessman married to Julia and has two children, seventeen-year old stepdaughter Juniper and six-year old daughter Lily.
Critical to the story is the fact that Xavier is bi-racial; his mother is African- American and his deceased father was white. The Whitmans are white. The families are friendly until too many circumstances, contrived and otherwise, place them on opposite sides of the newly built fence between them.
I stated earlier that this is a simple book with a complex storyline. The complexity comes from the fact that simple things happen every day, as they did in this story, and they can lead to complex and terrible results. From the beginning we are told that we probably will make assumptions about what happened with these two families. I didn’t want to make those assumptions, yet I did. The devil was in the details, as they say. I didn’t know how the story would play out, and honestly, would not have guessed that it would happen as it did. What I assumed correctly was that it would be painful and sickening and that I would be angry at the outcome.
There is more to A Good Neighborhood than what might seem obvious. Without giving spoilers, I will note that the book confronts several issues that plague the world in which we currently live. My first thought was that the author was trying to tackle too many topics in one short book, but she handled them all deftly and pointedly, and never did any of them seem unrealistic or overhyped. I wish there had been different outcomes to some of the situations, but sadly, they played out just as they likely would have in real life.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. #TheConfessionClub #NetGalley
Reviewed August 2019
House of Black and Blue 