While these professions suggest a degree of financial stability, if not affluence, Fowler emphasizes that the denizens of Oak Knoll aren’t ostentatious, like the “yuppies” in the “big graceless houses in new outlying subdivisions” or the “blue bloods” and industrial titans in nearby “fairy-tale” mansions. So, who are these residents? And by extension, who are we? Ecology professors. “And if you’ve read a John Grisham or Jodi Picoult novel, you’ve been to court.”) (“We’ve all seen enough cop shows to have a sense of what life is like inside a county jail,” they say. “Is this a cautionary tale? We think it is - but we wish it weren’t.” The Greek chorus gossips to the reader, often using assumed shared references to do the heavy lifting. “We sow the seeds - we hope - of prevention of future sorrows,” they say. The story starts with the residents of Oak Knoll, “a desirable neighborhood in the middle of a desirable North Carolina city,” and the bold choice of first-person plural.

In the same way that activism cannot be sold for $26, black characters cannot be bought when they lack depth and accessibility. “I approached the project with respect,” Fowler assures us, and the story that follows is, in her words, “a kind of activism in our troubled and troubling times.”īut her novel breaks the promise of its premise, revealing weaknesses in both craft and conviction. The acknowledgments section of “A Good Neighborhood” appears just before the first chapter, and Therese Anne Fowler begins by acknowledging herself - specifically “the matter of me, a white author, needing to create points of view for two African-American characters.” To pre-empt any criticism, she paraphrases Zadie Smith, who reportedly told a white author who was anxious about writing black characters, “Just do your homework.” A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD By Therese Anne Fowler

Books by therese anne fowler