'ware the mob

Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: 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 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.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.