A Crime in the Neighborhood
Author: Suzanne Berne
Publisher: Algonquin Books
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Crime in the Neighborhood centers on a headline event — the molestation and murder of a twelve-year-old boy in a Washington, D.C., suburb. At the time of the murder, 1973, Marsha was nine years old and as an adult she still remembers that summer as a time when murder and her own family's upheaval were intertwined. Everyone, it seemed to Marsha at the time, was committing crimes. Her father deserted his family to take up with her mother's younger sister. Her teenage brother and sister were smoking and shoplifting, and her mother was "flirting" with Mr. Green, the new next-door neighbor. Even the president of the United States seemed to be a crook. But it is Marsha's own suspicions about who committed this crime that has the town up in arms and reveals what happens when fear runs wild.
TL;DR Review
A Crime in the Neighborhood is a strongly narrated and echoing novel that seems to be about a local murder, on the surface, but is really about parental abandonment.
For you if: You love a good slow burn childhood character study.
Full Review
“‘He’s a real romantic,’ said my mother. ‘Romantics are usually bastards, in case you haven’t noticed.’”
I read A Crime in the Neighborhood because it was the fourth winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and I’m following along their #ReadingWomen challenge this year. I enjoyed it overall and have a strong appreciation for what Suzanne Berne was trying to do (and did, successfully).
The novel starts out quite exciting, and it will hook you write away as the body of Boyce Ellison, who had been molested and murdered, is found. After a few pages, the narrator reveals herself to be a woman named Marsha, now an adult, who was living in that suburban DC neighborhood as a young child at the time. Around the same time that Boyce was murdered, Marsha’s father had an affair with her mother’s youngest sister and ultimately ended up running away with her. All while the Watergate scandal is unfolding.
Marsha, inspired by now “noticing everything” is the key to solving Sherlock Holmes mysteries, starts keeping a notebook with all her observations about her neighbors, especially the suspiciously single and socially awkward Mr. Green who lives next door.
The book is definitely a slow burn, but it does have an undercurrent of suspense — who killed Boyce? Everyone in the neighborhood is on edge and suspicious, fueling a sharp hostility toward anyone who doesn’t fit the nuclear family white-picket-fence mentality. And yet this book isn’t really about Boyce at all. It’s actually about Marsha and the way her father’s abandonment and her mother’s forced single parenthood, all while the government and her community fall down around her, ripped away her innocence.
The choice to have Marsha narrate this book as an adult was really effective. She’s incredibly attuned to her own mistakes and mentality, but the distance and wisdom she’s gained since allows her to reflect on the motivations and experiences that her parents must have lived as well.
After the exciting start, this book didn’t GRAB me throughout. The slow burn felt slow. And if you are looking for a thriller or exciting murder mystery, this isn’t going to be it. But it really is an impressive work of character and narration, I think, and can teach us a lot about good writing.
Trigger Warnings
Child rape
Child murder / loss of a child
Parental abandonment
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