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    A Crime in the Neighborhood
    A Crime in the Neighborhood
    A Crime in the Neighborhood
    Audiobook7 hours

    A Crime in the Neighborhood

    Written by Suzanne Berne

    Narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, A Crime in the Neighborhood is the story of a young girl's coming of age during a turbulent time in American history. Living in a quiet suburb of Washington, D.C., Marsha is nine years old in the summer of 1973. While the nation's attention is focused on the breaking Watergate scandal, her quiet neighborhood is going through its own upheaval. Looking back as an adult, she remembers it as a time when her father's abandonment of his family becomes entwined with the arrival of a new neighbor and the death of a boy who lives down the street. Deeply disillusioned by the changes in her life, Marsha takes it upon herself to find the boy's murderer, which sets off a chain of tragic events. A poignant and startling novel, A Crime in the Neighborhood expertly shows what can happen when fear and suspicion gain control of a community's better judgement.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 8, 2011
    ISBN9781461809388
    A Crime in the Neighborhood
    Author

    Suzanne Berne

    Suzanne Berne is the author of?four previous novels: The Dogs of Littlefield;?The Ghost at the Table;?A Perfect Arrangement; and?A Crime in the Neighborhood, winner of Great Britain’s Orange Prize. She lives outside of Boston with her husband. 

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    Reviews for A Crime in the Neighborhood

    3.5/5

    160 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This 1999 Orange prize winner is a book that I read in one sitting. In 1973, a young, little boy is found dead in the woods behind a shopping mall in a suburb of Washington, DC. Ravaged and beaten, his assailant was never found. This was a summer of not- to- be -forgotten occurrences. When Marsha's beloved father chooses to run off with her mothers aunt, the family is torn apart. A small town on edge, consumed with fear after the murder of the small boy, and now, Marsha and her siblings also have to face the fear of life without a father.Their mother valiantly tries to carry on. But, life is not easy, and soon the family is made to feel out of place. Acting out, Marsha accuses a single older man who lives next door of the crime. She kept a journal all summer long, and it is filled with tidbits regarding his oddities.As a country learns of Richrd Nixon and Watergate, both nationally and locally, the world seems to be a very unfair, unsafe place to live.Excellent!Four Stars!
    • 5/5
      This is an incredibly well written book - carefully structured, well paced - which never fails to pick up on the 'telling detail' that will capture a particular moment. Narrator Marsha is looking back at a time in her childhood when her father ran off with her Aunt, when the Watergate scandal was all over the news, a boy was murdered in her neighbourhood and a socially awkward guy moved in next door. Marsha tells the story as an adult but her observations of the events are those of a child (how much I prefer this approach, as opposed to having a child narrate AS a child, which can be disorientating and cringemaking). Once all the strands of the plot are in play it's possible to predict with a high level of accuracy how it will all play out, but I wasn't too bothered about that. What I enjoyed most was the quality of the writing - literary but readable - as well as feeling a tremendous amount of admiration for Marsha's mum.
    • 3/5
      In the summer of '72, in the D.C. suburbs, 10 year old Marsha tires to make sense of a word that is becoming increasingly uncertain. On a national level, and in her neighborhood, a boy is molested and murdered. Throughout the summer Marsha watches the building hysteria in the neighborhood, and record. There are so many great things about this book that I wish I could rave about it, but it left me lukewarm. What's right with it? The author has a good ear for dialogue. Her character development of both her minor and major characters is excellent, especially in the case of the protagonist's mother,perhaps the most likable character in the book. The story is set in the early '70s in the Washington, D. C. suburb near Bethesda, MD. I spent the latter '70s in the suburbs of D. C., but in Virginia. In truth, I did not even live in the States until the mid '70's. However, from living among Americans abroad, and later, living in the general area Berne is describing, she hits the right tone and paints a vivid setting that captures the era.

      The main thing that is wrong with the book is it is too long to have a real sock in the jaw impact. Part of that is because of the protagonist. She is an observant child, watching everything in the neighborhood. "Rear Window"-like she is rendered partly immobile because of a broken ankle. She spends most of the summer watching and recording the goings on of her neighborhood into her journal. Fine, if this was an interesting child, but she isn't. One blurb compares her to Scout Finch. No way! I think she is more like Frankie from A Member of the Wedding, perhaps one of the most annoying characters in my reading history. Marsha describes herself as a child who was rarely seen, but always on the edge watching any tense or emotional situation. In her home she spends her time eavesdropping, spying on her siblings and searching their rooms. Spying & prying. I can't get over a real dislike for the girl who was not at all interesting, but a creepy, morbid little ghoul. I generally like creepy characters, but this kid is a creepy bore. As for the other children, they aren't much better. Granted Marsha is dealing with some difficult times. First, her father has left her mother, for her mother's younger sister, no less. Mom is trying to figure out how to go it alone, and actually making fine work of it. Her siblings don't care for her and exclude her. Her neighbor who is the closest in age to her is maybe more of a creepy kid than she is. So virtually friendless and dealing with the break-up of her family and a broken ankle, you can have some sympathy for her. Still, when it comes to the heart of the book, I just kept thinking of other authors who have tapped this same well with more chilling impact, Lillian Hellman & Ian McEwan come first to mind.
    • 4/5
      This book seems to be a little bit of everything, there is some modern history, what with Watergate popping up at times in the story, and a look back at what "family" and "neighborhood" meant back in those days. I was surprised to realize just how much has changed in such a short span of time, even though I lived through some of the changes myself. You also get a crime to solve and a family's issues to struggle through. It is an interesting, but captivating combination. I found it surprisingly real, much more real than it sounds like it could be.The writing throughout the book is excelent and the author won the Orange/Women's Prize for it. Some are disappointed in the dramatic winding up to an uneventful ending, but in my mind that is what happens half of the time when crime comes to an area. It only added to the realistic feel for me. I am not certain if the point was to make you look at the past and compare it to how we live now, but I was certainly doing that throughout. This was a wonderful reflection of human nature and a well told story. I will most likely look for other books from the author.
    • 5/5
      Do you remember when an event happened during your youth that burst your idyllic bubble? For young Marsha, the main character in Suzanne Berne's A Crime In The Neighborhood, two back-to-back events rocked her world: the departure of her father and the murder of a neighborhood boy. Though unrelated, these two events became Marsha's focus during the summer of 1972, changing her life forever.Berne deftly intermingles these two storylines throughout A Crime In The Neighborhood. We learn first that Marsha's father, Larry, was having an affair with his wife's youngest sister. Marsha's mom, Lois, finds out, and eventually Larry moves away with his mistress - all within a span of a few weeks. Marsha was daddy's little girl, not wanting to take sides, but desperately needing his father's presence in her life.Then, a neighborhood boy is found molested and dead in nearby woods, sending shock waves over Marsha's quiet community. The neighborhood is on high alert, including Marsha, who begins observing her new neighbor, Mr. Green. She's convinced that Mr. Green is the murderer, and her young imagination begins to convince her more and more as the days progress.Marsha is precocious, smart and observant - skills that would later serve her as an attorney. She also makes a delightful narrator. In fact, Berne did a commendable job creating all the characters, from Marsha's stoic mother to the panic-stricken neighbors. But I love Marsha's innocence and imagination the best.A Crime In The Neighborhood can't just be characterized as a murder mystery - it has so many other layers: the state of marriage in the 1970's, political unrest with Watergate and Richard Nixon; and a coming of age tale for a young girl. Winner of the 1999 Orange Prize for Fiction, A Crime In The Neighborhood would be enjoyed by lovers of the Orange Prize and murder mystery fans alike. It truly has something for everyone.
    • 3/5
      The framing device for this novel is the brutal rape and murder of a young boy in a suburban neighborhood, which is never solved. But what the book really is about are the fundamental changes our “safe” middle-class world went through in the 1970s, including divorce, senseless crime and the encroachment of the outside world on the suburban cocoons we had built for ourselves. This small, quiet novel paints a portrait of these changes in deft, succinct strokes.
    • 4/5
      One summer evening in 1972, a young boy was brutally murdered behind a suburban shopping mall. His death sent shock waves through the neighborhood; this crime was unprecedented. The murder and related events are retold by Marsha, a 10-year-old girl. She becomes a bit obsessed with the murder and imagines herself a private investigator, collecting "evidence" in a notebook. But at the same time, Marsha's own life has been turned upside-down by dysfunctional family relationships. The reader quickly realizes Marsha may not have a firm grasp of the situation.In fact, over the course of the novel several "crimes" are committed: husband-wife betrayal, deceit between siblings, squabbles and mistrust between neighbors. Some are incidental; others have significant after-effects. Suddenly it becomes clear that solving the murder is not the point of this Orange Prize-winning novel. It starts out as a mystery, but ends with insights on a deeper crime: man's inhumanity to man. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      I've read better - but also a lot worse! A spy story from the perspective of a child.