A Good Neighbourhood

Therese Anne Fowler's novel opens with two conflicts — a teenage romance between neighbors' children and a legal battle over a dying tree — but the darker layer is Brad Whitman, the wealthy stepfather whose relationship with his stepdaughter Juniper is far more troubling than the property dispute. The neighborhood-as-narrator structure gives the story a Greek-tragedy quality: you sense from early pages that this will not end well. Fowler handles the race and class commentary with nuance, and the characters on all sides are rendered with real empathy. Content warning is essential: the novel contains sexual abuse of a minor by a stepfather, rape, and a bleak ending. This is adult literary fiction for readers who can handle its weight — not appropriate for younger readers or those sensitive to these themes. An NPR Best Book of 2020.