A Crime in the Neighborhood
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
'This ambitious account of a sudden coming of age reminded me strongly of To Kill a Mockingbird - and is every bit as moving and satisfying' Daily Telegraph
In the long hot summer of 1972, three events shattered the serenity of ten-year-old Marsha's life: her father ran away with her mother's sister; a young boy called Boyd Ellison was molested and murdered; and Watergate made the headlines. Living in a world no longer safe or familiar, Marsha turns increasingly to 'the book of evidence' in which she records the doings of the neighbors, especially of shy Mr Green next door. But as Marsha's confusion and her murder hunt accelerate, her 'facts' spread the damage cruelly and catastrophically throughout the neighborhood.
'It is impossible not to be completely swept along. Berne's vision is gently humorous, ironic, quirky, and she writes with such piercing sensitivity . . . a compelling debut novel' The Times
'Intensely evocative. I loved it' Observer
'The writing is marvellous . . . comparisons have been made between her and Anne Tyler and Harper Lee. Same ball-park, delightfully different voice' Mail on Sunday
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1972, against the steamy summer of a Washington, D.C., suburb filled with the buzz of locusts and Walter Cronkite's breaking news reports on Watergate, Berne's marvelously controlled first novel explores the effect of a boy's brutal murder on a community and on a 10-year-old girl, a neighbor of the murdered child, whose own world is falling apart. With an elegiac beauty and sadness, the girl, Marsha, looks back from the vantage point of adulthood and tells how the story of the murder became her own story. She brings a keen observance of the events of that summer: of the night her mother smashed every dish on the table after confronting Marsha's father with knowledge of his affair with her favorite sister; of the desolate aftermath of the father's leaving; of the murder, followed by neighborhood night patrols; and of the fearful actions of a community that rallied not around the family of the dead boy but around its own desire for safety. At the climax of the story lies Marsha's role in a murder accusation leveled at an innocent neighbor. The menace and surface beauty of Berne's suburban landscape will remind many of the worlds of John Cheever or Shirley Jackson. Through seamless narrative structure, an extraordinary sense of lightness and suspense and a deeply affecting conclusion, Berne's debut delivers a resonant portrait of a girl's, a community's and a country's loss of innocence. Author tour.
