A Crime in the Neighbourhood: Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction - Softcover

Berne, Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140273328 ISBN 13: 9780140273328

Publisher: Penguin, 1999

Synopsis

10-year-old Marsha is in turmoil following the collapse of her parents' marriage, and the brutal murder of a local boy. When the shy bachelor from next door begins to take an interest in Marsha's mother, Marsha is drawn into a cruel spiral of events that quickly spins out of control.

About this title

Review:

A murdered boy, a runaway husband, a family spinning out of control-- Suzanne Berne's A Crime in the Neighbourhood is no ordinary coming-of-age novel. The narrator of this dark tale of 1970s suburbia is 10-year-old Marsha, who lives with her mother and older twin siblings in a suburb of Washington, D.C. In the spring of 1972, a young boy is molested, murdered and then dumped behind a shopping mall. That the child was not particularly likeable is just one of Berne's deviations from the expected, as clear-eyed Marsha recalls the boy's many character flaws, even as she relates the details of an undeniably horrifying crime. Though murder is the most visible crime in Marsha's neighbourhood, it is by no means the only one; when Marsha's father and aunt run off together, their enormous betrayal sends Marsha's mother into a tailspin and Marsha into a strange dalliance with Mr. Green, the neighbour next door.

A Crime in the Neighbourhood is a deft and provocative first novel that turns many of the coming-of-age conventions on their heads. There is nothing sepia tinted about Marsha's recollections of her childhood--the lives of 10-year-olds are mired in the mistakes of adults and the cruelties of other children. The pitiless eye Marsha brings to bear on the friends family, and acquaintances of her youth makes A Crime in the Neighbourhood an unusual and worthwhile read.

Review:

"A remarkable first novel...that captures the history of child-parent relations for the last quarter of a century."--The New York Times Book Review "Like Alice McDermott's That Night and in the tradition of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, Suzanne Berne has crafted a child's disillusionment that mirrors a greater disaffection."--Newsday

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0140273328
• ISBN 13: 9780140273328
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256