Book Review: The Neighbor

Title: The Neighbor

Author: London Clarke

Date: 2021

Publisher: Carfax Abbey

ISBN: 978-13939-17694

Length: 419 pages

Quote: "I'm the only one now who can protect my children while they're inside the house."

And Claire does a terrible job of it. But that's normal. This is horror fiction. Main characters make terrible mistakes. Usually they can correct their mistakes by the end of the book. First-person narrative is usually a hopeful sign...

Let's admit it: I like this book a lot more than I usually like horror fiction. I read it, I give people some indication of the level of horror they have to face if they want to buy something with just the right chill factor, but horror stories I've read twice are just about limited to Dracula, Frankenstein, Stephen King, Charles Williams, and things I forgot reading the first time. After reading this novel I did not immediately want to delete it off the Kindle; that says a lot for The Neighbor.

Maybe it's because I'm living in my own bad-neighbor story. Why has it not ended decisively by now, as real-life stories of bad neighbors usually do? Because my bad neighbor inherited the same kinds of intelligence from the same ancestors I did. Because I don't have much money to spend on the kind of technology local law enforcement want to see used and don't want to supply. I've seen some of that "Are you sure you're not just obsessed with this man?" kind of thing the characters in the novel encounter (and yes, they are obsessed with the evil man). I'm not. I'm interested in solving a real-world crime, but if I ever feel attracted to another man, it won't be one of my cousins. As long as they keep their health they are good-looking men, but to me they're relatives. It's mutual. Sometimes bad-neighbor situations really are entirely about the real estate. Maybe some part of me was craving a story about a fictional bad-neighbor situation that was about sex and sin and repentance and salvation.

I want to say this on behalf of women who are single, widowed, divorced (like Claire), estranged, temporarily separated, or just working different shifts from their husbands, and are having to deal with creepy male neighbors. There is a tendency, promoted by very bad fiction, to think that any conflict between people of different genders are "really" about sexual attraction to each other and will be resolved by indulging that attraction. Even when they feel such an attraction, sleeping around doesn't solve any problems, except to the extent that it distracts people from their original problems by creating worse ones. We all need to admit that after about grade six, nowadays when people feel free to admit and act on their attractions, conflicts between a male and a female are likely to be really about whatever they're about, on the surface: sales, promotions, top grades, scholarships...real estate...

Anyway, whether or not there is an attraction to be acted on, conflicts between a male and a female have to be resolved in the same way conflicts between people of the same sex and/or family have to be resolved. The Neighbor acknowledges this. Claire's husband has just dumped her for another woman; the bachelor who moved in next door, Steel, is attractive; the attraction is mutual. Given a pretext to speak to each other, they flop into bed. Then a stuffed toy cat Steel gave Claire's youngest child starts haunting the whole family, and her eldest child starts sleepwalking, and the computer starts showing random creepy images that seem to stir up the deepest fears of the person looking at it...and then the really scary events of the story begin. 

Gunnar thinks a drink is a drunk; for some people it is. When he leaves, Claire feels free to "enjoy the taste of wine." Gunnar seems all too ready to ascribe all the bad things that happen to his ex-wife and children to the Demon Alcohol. In the reality of the story I was hoping he'd have to face the different kind of demon Claire and the children are dealing with. He doesn't, but it's a series. There could be a sequel where he does. 

The story takes place in the Hump of Virginia, where Claire soon realizes that along with her demon "lover" she's also dealing with the Demon Development. A more distant neighbor's property is under construction, but the job never gets done because a bottomless sinkhole can't seem to be filled. Claire's Korean immigrant friend tells her that this is because there are "too many holes" in the neighborhood, not physical holes but portals to the underworld through which evil spirits are getting in. The sinkhole is the physical manifestation of the spiritual holes in everyone else's lives, not only Claire's. After talking to Steel another couple will be violently attacked, a new baby will be born dead, and other bad things will happen. Claire can only protect herself and her children.

And she's only a social worker. Claire became a social worker because she wanted to believe that her father developed a mental illness after tormenting mental patients with exorcisms of demons that didn't eist; she didn't want to believe either in demons or in God. She wants to believe she can help people by observing their unhappiness with detachment, never raising a finger, only ever handing out psychological cliches. Before the story's over Claire will be forced to confess sins and ask people for prayers and even pray, herself. 

No, that doesn't make this a Sunday book. The classic cliche of horror fiction is that religious faith, usually embodied in Catholic forms but generally understood as just faith in some sort of higher power of goodness, is always what saves the survivors. The focus of horror fiction is not on the faith but on the feeling of horror, though. The effect on readers' souls may be cathartic but is not inspirational, rhough it's an interesting psychological question why people don't report feeling inspired to pray and do good works after exposure to horror stories. Traditional morality is usually a solid motif in horror stories--Claire's horrors begin with a reckless sex act, in other stories it's a theft or an outburst of unrighteous anger or a show of disrespect toward a parent--yet somehow the emotional effect doesn't seem to be to motivate readers to be chaste or honest or patient or loyal. Unless, of course, they consciously think about it 

Anyway every one of those 419 pages is well written, reinforcing traditional morality if you consciously look for it. Claire's life starts to behave like a computer infested with Windows 10 during one of Microsoft's "update" fits, only, unlike Windows 10, the chaos has an explanation that can be brought under control. Claire has to do the kind of "emotional work" she has presumably guided patients through but hasn't done for herself, facing the trauma that motivates what has seemed like a foolish but harmless quirk: she likes to sneak around town at night pretending to be someone, anyone, other than herself. 

She does not, in the story, have to confess and repent of her sins, but Clarke is a good enough writer to suggest that she's doing that somewhere offstage where denominational bickering about the process of confession won't spoil the story for readers. Some things are best left to readers' imagination and it takes a skilled writer to activate readers' imagination, rather than spelling out every detail.

And, local readers? Local writer.