A Crime in the Neighborhood: Winner of the Womens Prize for Fiction

(Paperback)

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Description

The winner of the 1999 Orange Prize for Fiction- a seductive story of suspicion, fear and moral corruption, set in seventies suburbia. In the long hot summer of 1972, three events shattered the serenity of ten year old Marsha's life- her father ran away with her mother's sister Ada; Boyd Ellison, a young boy, was molested and murdered; and Watergate made the headlines. Living in a world no longer safe or familiar, Marsha turns increasingly to 'the book of evidence' in which she records the doings of the neighbors, especially of shy Mr Green next door. But as Marsha's confusion and her murder hunt accelerate, her 'facts' spread the damage cruelly and catastrophically throughout the neighborhood.

Reviews

"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

Author Bio

Suzanne Berne's first novel, A Crime in the Neighbourhood, won the 1999 Orange Prize. She is also the author of A Perfect Arrangement, The Ghost at the Table, Missing Lucile and The Dogs of Littlefield. Suzanne Berne lives with her husband and two daughters near Boston.