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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
Set in 1972, against the steamy summer of a Washington, D.C., suburb filled with the buzz of locusts and Walter Cronkite's breaking news reports on Watergate, Berne's marvelously controlled first novel explores the effect of a boy's brutal murder on a community and on a 10-year-old girl, a neighbor of the murdered child, whose own world is falling apart. With an elegiac beauty and sadness, the girl, Marsha, looks back from the vantage point of adulthood and tells how the story of the murder became her own story. She brings a keen observance of the events of that summer: of the night her mother smashed every dish on the table after confronting Marsha's father with knowledge of his affair with her favorite sister; of the desolate aftermath of the father's leaving; of the murder, followed by neighborhood night patrols; and of the fearful actions of a community that rallied not around the family of the dead boy but around its own desire for safety. At the climax of the story lies Marsha's role in a murder accusation leveled at an innocent neighbor. The menace and surface beauty of Berne's suburban landscape will remind many of the worlds of John Cheever or Shirley Jackson. Through seamless narrative structure, an extraordinary sense of lightness and suspense and a deeply affecting conclusion, Berne's debut delivers a resonant portrait of a girl's, a community's and a country's loss of innocence. Author tour. (June)
YA‘In the summer of 1972, a suburban neighborhood of Washington, DC, is rocked by the molestation and murder of a 12-year-old boy. Marsha Eberhardt, then 10, begins to gather clues and information. Told by the adult Marsha, the story uncannily depicts the reasoning and thought processes of a vulnerable and confused girl. As the nation sifts through the Watergate disillusionment and Spring Hill tries to deal with the gruesome murder, Marsha is trying to accept the fact that her father has deserted the family for her mother's youngest sister. Struck by the observational powers of Sherlock Holmes, Marsha decides she will begin recording facts, observations, and clues about her family and neighborhood. When a new neighbor moves in, Marsha begins to record his every movement in her "Evidence" notebook. Anyone who has suffered through a family breakup, or knows someone who has, will relate to the youngster's thoughts and decisions. Dealing with an anger she cannot articulate, the girl becomes caught in a lie she cannot stop herself from telling. The adult Marsha considers the "what if" possibilities that may have prevented an incident that haunts her life, but the child was inexorably caught in the lies that took on a life of their own. A compelling book that will easily capture the imagination of YAs.‘Carol DeAngelo, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA
"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
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