A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD - Therese Anne Fowler

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A Good Neighborhood comes out on March 10, 2020.

I feel uncomfortable rating this work.

What a shattering novel, filled with pain and reflections on America’s veneer of civility over wounds of racism, classism, and hate. And the seeds of hope.

In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son. Xavier is headed to college in the fall, and after years of single parenting, Valerie is facing the prospect of an empty nest. All is well until the Whitmans move in next door―an apparently traditional family with new money, ambition, and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter. With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

Told from multiple points of view, A Good Neighborhood asks big questions about life in America today―What does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don't see eye to eye?―as it explores the effects of class, race, and heartrending star-crossed love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.

Therese Anne Fowler’s work is a gut-punch delivered in millimeters, something so slow it hurts—and yet the words breeze by with achingly perfect sentences. It is an uncomfortable contrast. I think it means to be.

A Good Neighborhood pulled the tensions like a literary thriller and left me pensive and angry. Simmering. Any novel that provokes such an intense response deserves our attention, but I do wonder at the future purposes of this book. Will it provoke positive change? Or will it just poke at wounds?

I don’t have answers, and I’m not sure my review is overly helpful in the large discussions this novel is engaging.

I will say that I will never forget this, and I did cry. A lot. Powerful words, powerful themes.

Thank you to St Martin’s Press for a giveaway ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.