As thought provoking as it was heartbreaking.
A Good Neighborhood
By Therese Anne Fowler
This book was as thought provoking as it was heartbreaking. A story of a random neighborhood made up of regular people and how the seemingly innocuous events that make up their individual lives can come together into a confluence that is explosive.
The story line surrounds a rich white family who has just had a McMansion built in a regular middle class neighborhood. The dad is a bit of a local celeb with his thriving HVAC company’s tv and radio commercials. The neighbor is a widowed black woman raising a son who’s about to set off for his dreams as a classical guitarist at an elite music school in San Francisco and the Oak Tree that drives everything off of the rails.
Yes, I said an Oak Tree.
With no major spoilers this plot unfolds like a slow moving train wreck- you think you know what will happen and then as the story develops you wish you could look away. This story plays at heartstrings and brings up bile all at the same time. Although parts of the plot may seem far-fetched, the truly scary part is that it is not.
There’s a bit of a legal twist in here and as an attorney, I can say that it, sadly, played out exactly how it would in real life, as tragic as that may seem. The system is far from perfect and this book points that out lyrically.
As a point of interest, the story is told by an unseen narrator who is presumably one of the many neighbors in the neighborhood, which I actually enjoyed, because it was a semi-reliable point of view, though we have no idea who that person actually was, but the author used this unique tool to not delve too deeply into any one character’s psyche to give us a more rounded and accurate description of the scenes unfolding, as well as the various backstories.
This was the perfect rainy Sunday read and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I got this one from my Book of the Month Subscription for March.
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