Category Archives: writing

THE MONDAY BOOK: A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

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Normally I only put books I like in the Monday book. But after battling through this plot, I need to talk.

Character driven books are my favorite. This one set up a premise and then populated it. A black family live in a neighborhood where a white family move in and make some major changes to the property, resulting in damage to a historic tree on the black family’s property.

The black family would be bi-racial, except the white dad died because his family wouldn’t accept his black wife. It’s that simple. And it was kinda…. just too simple. This whole book feels like someone said “I need to write about the plight of American suburbs trying to not be racist” and then kept thinking up more convoluted ways to explore that. There are myriad ways of exploring racism in American suburbs without complications. Try skittles and iced tea walking home from 7-11. You don’t need to kill a historic tree through ostentatious display of wealth.

The narration of the story is told by “the neighborhood.” You never know or meet who is talking. They explore the character of the fall guy in this novel – the creepy stepfather who sets up his stepdaughter’s lover on a rape charge using his connections, and then finds his connections won’t actually turn it off again when he wants.

There’s also a totally unbelievable phone call from the teen girl who keeps saying she wasn’t raped, to the district attorney who is determined not to back down, and a conversation with a counselor who tells her 2/3 of women don’t believe they were raped at first, and pretty much have to come around to not accepting blame.

This is when I threw the book across the room. How many women have said they were raped and told they weren’t?

The plot is convoluted, the people are cardboard, the narration is weird, and frankly the handling of both racism and race culture feel like “what can I write about that will make people read me” rather than real. Those are terrible topics. They’re not entertainment fodder and if you can’t handle them with honesty and authenticity, write something else.

The Monday Book: PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU by Ellen Feldman

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I am a sucker for character driven plots, and this one is not. It was still an interesting read, but the whole thing is based on a “what if” premise, then the characters were kind of built around that.

What kind of person would pretend to be Jewish in Paris during World War II? Someone who was going to be in big trouble for having a German boyfriend. What kind of Jewish man would join the Nazis? Someone trying to survive.

The book is based both in the Paris bookshop the protagonist runs, and in the NYC publishing industry she flees to after the war. It’s an interesting premise but the book to me just followed the premise. The characters didn’t grow; they just went on doing what they do. Which might be part of the intention: after a harrowing experience, when you rebuild your life, how much can get you get back to living?

The writing is effective. The exploration of human nature–in this impossible situation, what would you do–is compelling. It was a worthwhile read. As you can tell, it wasn’t my favorite read ever, and one hesitates to call anything about such life or death situations a pleasant diversion, but this is the closest to a beach read I have ever seen a Holocaust novel come. Is that bad? Nah. Will I read other Feldman books. Probably, if just to see whether they are all based on premise or people.