Sarah Langan

A stunning book - both in itself and in the vehement negative reactions some readers have had to it. "Good Neighbors" is a creditable descendant of Miller's "The Crucible" and Jackson's "The Lottery" and it cannot help but reflect (without screeching) the fog of conspiracy thinking and mob mentality in which we presently live.

A tip of the hat is necessary to Rod Serling's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street:" "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and show more fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices...to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...and suspicion can destroy...and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own—for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone." show less

I think I see why people read these kinds of books. Reading this book was like walking on a people mover. "Whee!" I thought as the pages I held in my left hand added up and the those in my right hand diminished. "I'm reading so fast!"

But along the way my mental tally of annoying things about this novel kept me just this side of enjoying it. Here are some of the things that bugged me:

1) Poor editing. This rankles the copy editor in me every time. Not only do the repeated words and phrases show more distract me, but their presence suggests that even someone paid to read the novel didn't care enough about it to read it closely.

2) Internal inconsistencies. A character throws up one morning and then, twenty pages and a few storyline hours later, she throws up again but "it had been such a long time since she'd thrown up (New Year's Eve, 2000?) that she wasn't sure what is happening." (p 101 in the paperback I read) A character finds it painful to stand, and three paragraphs later, she stands without any other comment. (p 327) Sometimes the creatures can be killed by a shot to the head or a stab to the heart and other times they can't.

3) It's derivative. This book echoes Tommyknockers, Gerald's Game, I Am Legend, and every vampire story ever written.

4) Factual inaccuracies. The CDC headquarters is in Atlanta, not Washington, DC (there is a Washington office, but its mission is legislative strategy for public health policy). Poison ivy berries are an important food source for wild birds. These could probably go under "poor editing," but they annoyed me enough to get their own number in the list.

While I enjoyed the sense of speed I got while reading this novel, it wasn't enough to leave me feeling satisfied when I factor in all of these other things (not to mention the flat, stereotyped characters with ridiculously unsubtle names. Albert Sanguine? *Eye roll*). Oh, and it didn't scare me.

My quest for good, literary horror continues... show less

The Wildes are the newest family on Maple Street, a quiet crescent-shaped street on Long Island that faces a large park. The families on Maple Street are a fairly close-knit group, complete with block parties and the children roving through the backyards together in the summer. In the summer of 2027, tensions are running high due to a collapsing economy and worsening environmental conditions, and when a sinkhole opens up in the park during the Fourth of July block picnic, things get out of show more control and the Wildes get blamed for it all. By the end of the summer an entire family will be dead.

Apparently, what happens on Maple Street captures the public's attention, and by 20 years later all the surviving participants will have been interviewed numerous times, books will have been written, and there will even be an interactive Broadway play based on the events of that summer. But what actually happens on Maple Street?

The later analysis and interviews that are included lead the reader to believe that there is some confusion about who is to blame for what happened, but the contemporary narrative makes things fairly clear. It comes down to mental illness. As a result, debating responsibility was less interesting than watching the reactions of the residents of Maple Street. This is a modern-day Crucible, with sexual abuse replacing witchcraft. Peer pressure and mob mentality are undisguised, but what was most interesting to me was how some people doubled down on their accusations, even in the face of actual evidence to the contrary. It was fascinating.

Langan's writing is very vivid, evoking the heat and the smells of that summer (although apparently many things smell like candy apples) as well as the actions of the characters. My only complaint about this book is that there are far too many neighbors, and I couldn't distinguish among them. In terms of bringing the mob to life, this is very effective, but in terms of establishing individual motivation it is, of necessity, less effective. Unfortunately, not having a sense of many of the characters as individuals took away from the story for me. Still, this is a powerful book, and an important one, in a world where "truth" seems less and less concrete. show less

This is a slow burn, and even though you know from the opening paragraphs what is going to happen, it's still a tense page-turner, and things don't happen the way you think they're going to. The book explores how people are susceptible to mob mentality, and how public perceptions differ from people's actual inner behavior. Unfortunately, the book also relies heavily - and insensitively - on mental illness as the root cause of bad behavior. Mental illness felt like a deus ex machina that just show more explained everything: the book could have been a lot more interesting if more subtle dynamics had been at play. The book also could have handled race a lot more sensitively.

Content warning for child abuse and bullying. show less