A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne. Orange Prize

(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  An adult woman looks back on a pivotal time in her life: the summer of 1972.  Her parents split up that summer. A neighbor child got murdered. Worst of all, she herself caused the community to scapegoat an innocent.

Ten year-old Marsha lives in a stodgy suburb of Washington DC that is filled with conservative, straight-laced adults. Her dad, a real-estate broker, is vague and shallow.  Her mom, a housewife, is self-righteous and unpredictable. Her teenaged brother and sister are twins so absorbed in each other, shoplifting, and maintaining their annoying comic personas (complete with fake British accents) that they ignore Marsha except to pepper her with occasional insults.

The novel opens with the neighbor kid found murdered.  Even worse, he was molested and then had his skull caved in with a rock. But the author wants to keep her agenda clear of any sentimentality or tragedy.  It becomes clear through Marsha's memories that the kid was a jerk.

He enjoyed badgering people for things that he knew they wouldn't want to give.  (He asks Marsha if he can wear her glasses to see "what it's like.") He bullied little kids and fawned on bigger kids. In a one-page scene (that I'd recommend you skip), he tortures a preying mantis with his pocket knife. Of course Marsha, who is an exceedingly creepy kid herself, just stands there and watches. Her older brother breaks it up and stops just short of kicking both of their miserable asses.

Marsha has problems. Her father walks out on the family that summer.  Even worse, dad has been cheating on mom with mom's younger sister.  Again, the author avoids any romance or sentimentality by making the characters unpleasant. Dad is a hollow man, and Aunt Ada is a sensualist who comes off as incredibly stupid. 

Their betrayal devastates Marsha's brittle mom because she and Aunt Ada are two of the four Mayhew Girls: sisters who grew up in a tight-knit alliance to stave off the pain of being poor, too tall, and too intellectual. The other two Mayhew sisters are Aunt Claire and Aunt Fran who come to stay with Mom for awhile and try to talk her into beauty treatments to make her feel better.

Of course the worst is yet to come.  With the entire neighborhood freaking out over the kid's murder, any outsider is looked upon with suspicion.  Especially a bachelor like Mr. Green who has lived next door to Marsha's family for less than a year. Mom proves the exception to the rule: even though she regards the poor guy with contempt, she flirts with him to reaffirm her sense of her own attractiveness. 

Their "courtship" is grotesque:  Mom is ironic and hostile; Mr. Green is an inarticulate blob of desire.  Meanwhile Marsha, who sneaks around like an unappealing Harriet the Spy, writes down what little they say and do in her ever-present notebook. It won't take long for her resentment of her broken family to manifest in childish revenge against a vulnerable target like Mr. Green.  He is no murderer, but the neighborhood needs a scapegoat. First, the neighbors avoid his pathetic cook-out.  Later, after some hysterical accusations by Marsha, he's hauled off for police questioning and embarrassed to the point where he moves out.

So that's the book:  the adult Marsha remembers the summer she harmed an innocent, which is clearly the "crime" of the title. It's flawlessly written story, and I'll give it three stars out of five because many readers may enjoy it. However, for me, A Crime in the Neighborhood has that chilly, over-processed feel of an Iowa Writer's Workshop story in which banal events are over-scrutinized as though they hold the key to understanding humanity's evil. I personally prefer something with more action and better characters.

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A Crime in the Neighborhood

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