The good neighbourhood (I’m sorry, I will spell the title the way the book spells it but otherwise I’m going to spell it right!) of this novel is Oak Knolls, a quiet, middle class suburban area of North Carolina where the neighbours know each other and many have lived side by side for years. Valerie Alston-Holt is one of these, a widow with a teenage son. Xavier is smart and quiet, a recent high school graduate heading west with a music school scholarship in the fall.
The Whitmans are the new family in the neighbourhood. Brad Whitman is a minor local celebrity, known for his commercials advertising his HVAC company. Along with his wife Julia, her daughter Juniper, and their daughter Lily, Brad has moved in next door to Valerie and Xavier. While Oak Knoll is a modestly wealthy neighbourhood, the Whitmans’ wealth is not modest. Brad has built a giant new house complete with pool and landscaping. While the Alston-Holts and Whitmans are initially friendly, when it becomes clear that the Whitmans’ landscaping has damaged the roots of Valerie’s beloved oak tree, tensions quickly rise.
Before long, a lawsuit is in the mix. Add to that a budding and secret romance growing between Juniper and Xavier and the fact that Valerie is a Black woman raising a biracial son in 21st century America and it’s safe to say there is a lot of tension in this novel. Race is a key issue but so is poverty and movement between socio-economic classes. All of these characters are comfortably middle class but none of them started out that way. We get to learn about Brad’s childhood, about Julia’s struggles as a young single mom to Juniper, about Valerie and her husband when they first bought their house.
Juniper and Xavier are generally well portrayed as teenage characters. They’re almost instantly attracted to each other but incredibly awkward, even once they start dating. Juniper lives a privileged lifestyle now but remembers what life was like before her mom married Brad. She’s also becoming increasingly aware that Brad’s focus on her, and specifically her sexual purity, is not normal. Xavier, meanwhile, is painfully aware that even with a white father, he is still largely perceived as a Black man and he is becoming increasingly aware of how this disadvantaged him in the modern United States.
Without giving too much away, the story takes a very dramatic turn. Things get bad and then worse and worse, to the point where it started to feel slightly unbelievable. Not because bad things like this don’t happen but moreso because they kept happening to the same character. It ramped the story up to a melodramatic level. Likewise, Brad’s physical obsession with Juniper became increasingly difficult to read. It might be realistic but it was pretty gross to hear about.
I could see this being a good book to read in discussion with others. I was slightly surprised to realize that Fowler herself is a white woman because it seemed like she really wanted to illuminate Black experience. It made me question if that was something a white author should attempt. I’m not the reader to say whether or not she accurately captured this but I’d be curious to hear what other readers have to say.
Karissa Reads Books 
I read this book a few years ago and the story and the injustices stayed with me regardless of whether the author portrayed a different experience to her own or not. I still feel sad for the characters.
It is an interesting question. Would the same question be as relevant to a writer portraying the experiences of the opposite sex, or a younger writer portraying an older one, and so on? Diversity training in the workplace here at present focusses on whether someone is offended by the material or not, if so, it is offensive. Not sure if that’s exactly the same as someone trying to capture someone else’s experience or not though.
Yes, it’s definitely been a book I’ve thought about since I finished reading it.
I don’t like to pigeon hole authors and say they can only write about their own experiences but I know I would never tackle a racial subject like this as a white woman because I know I couldn’t do it justice. So I guess I’m more curious about the author’s background and what made her feel confident to take such topics on.
I tell my kids that – if someone else says you are hurting them, then you stop what you’re doing, you don’t argue why your actions aren’t hurtful!
When I did my MFA degree, there was a woman in the program whose father was black and mother was white. She told this story about being a little black girl in the grocery store, asking for something her mom wouldn’t give her, and then screaming and telling everyone that the white lady wasn’t her mom. It’s funny for how manipulative it is, but I say all that to say this: it’s possible the author has feelings about such relationships because she is the white mom to a biracial or multiracial child. Or she has a friend or neighbor, or something. I know many readers say authors should stay in their lane when it comes to race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, etc., but I suppose that as I age, I’m coming to the conclusion that I want it to be A) genuine/believable, and B) happening in a market in which people who are of the group that the author is creating are also well represented. We are improving on the second one. I know people threw a fit when T.C. Boyle wrote a book about a Mexican couple camping in the nearby woods of a white, liberal couple. I thought he was the perfect author for it because he IS that white liberal guy, and the book was about the liberals supporting immigration policy change until it affects them directly.
I don’t think authors should only write about their own lives experience or only create characters that reflect who they are in real life but I do think you have to tread carefully in creating something like this novel where the author is writing at times from the perspective of a biracial teenage boy, which she clearly isn’t. I wasn’t entirely convinced on the page that this character was accurate. But I freely admit that I’m not the right reader to say if he was true to life or not.
I was thinking about this conversation more over the last day. I think I have a hierarchy for what I’m willing to believe in when authors writes about someone who is unlike themselves: 1) I want someone who grew up in that culture and identifies with the main character, 2) I’m happy with someone who grew up in that culture but doesn’t identify with the main character (like maybe a biracial author vs. the parent of a biracial person), and 3) Someone who entered the culture later in life and has been accepted by the culture. I don’t ever want to read a book for which an author did research of a culture and tried to capture it. I was able to think about what I’ll read by considering the nuances of the D/deaf community. Who was born deaf? Who became late deafened? Who knows ASL? Who uses sign language in English word order? Who went to a Deaf school? Who has a Deaf child? Who has a Deaf parent? Who uses ASL fluently but isn’t deaf? Who is an interpreter? Who wants to learn ASL because they like the language? There is so much nuance! So, transposing to the D/deaf community, I would want to read books by 1) a Deaf person, 2) a child or parent of a Deaf person, 3) an interpreter or person who knows ASL and is hearing. I don’t want to read any books with Deaf people written by hearing people who aren’t in the culture and who did some research.
That hierarchy makes so much sense and I can agree with that. It makes me wonder how much effort an author needs to make to explain which level they fit into.
Yes! The American Dirt lady was so frustrating because she decided to put herself into a culture based on having 1/16 blood connection to some relative who was Hispanic. I mean….
Yeah, that was lame. A relative of mine many years ago did some family ancestry research and was excited to learn some great (many times removed) grandmother of ours might have been First Nations. But the rest of us pointed out that it certainly doesn’t make us Indigenous and we’d be embarrassed to try to make any sort of claim based on this very tenuous connection.
I wonder what a person should do with such information….maybe use any privilege you have to uplift that group? I’m not sure… I certainly don’t want anyone to do things just for the sake of performing their allyship, either.
To me, this connection is so tenuous and far removed that it feels meaningless. There’s a lot of controversy in Canada recently about people claiming Indigenous heritage but it actually being false because so many of those records have been lost.
Hmm lots of dicey topics in here, it sounds complicated which appeals to me. Although, I can see why the depictions of that step dad towards his step Daugther would be gross. Ugh, I would find that difficult to read being a mother, and a female!
Those parts were really hard to read/listen to! His character really convinces himself that his teenage stepdaughter wants to have a physical relationship with him and I have no idea of that’s an accurate portrayal of such a man but it’s really gross.
ewwwwwwwwww
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