The New Neighbor

June 22, 2015
Stewart (The History of Us) embarks on a promising exploration of the secrets we all carry and our refusal to forgive ourselves. Margaret Riley is an elderly woman who lives on a pond in the Tennessee mountains. She is comfortable with her seclusion and the company of mystery novels. This changes when Jennifer Young moves into the house across the pond from her, with her young son Milo. Margaret can tell right away that Jennifer has a secret, but she can't figure out what it is. Jennifer becomes her masseuse and Margaret starts to let her guard down, hiring Jennifer to write down her story, while Margaret tries to pry out some details of Jennifer's own life. When Jennifer's secrets come out, Margaret makes confessions of her own. Throughout, it is difficult for readers to feel completely situated within this story. It feels like one part character study and internal monologue, and one part suspense, but without a strong sense of dramatic tension. Readers never feel that either woman is in danger from anyone, so they lack a sense of urgency around their stories. While readers might find their struggles of conscience intriguing, the denouement is clumsy and feels rushed.

July 1, 2015
Morally ambiguous is a concept Jennifer Young has taught her son, Milo, to understand. True, he is smart for a four-year-old, but it is also the defining premise of their life on the run. Jennifer married her teenage sweetheart, Tommy, who turned out to be a drunk and a cheat and stole her daughter's heart away from her. When Tommy dies under uncertain circumstances, Jennifer and Milo are forced to flee, relocating in a Tennessee mountain town where their closest neighbor, Margaret, is a 91-year-old with her own hidden past. Inspired by the detective stories that occupy her otherwise empty days, Margaret insinuates herself into Jennifer's routine, hoping to learn Jennifer's secrets, while revealing more of her own than she probably intends. The concepts of responsibility and atonement lie at the heart of Stewart's (The History of Us, 2013) intricately meditative novel, which shows just how deeply a person must dig in order to uncover the truth about one's self and those one loves. Keenly engrossing and multilayered, this mystery and literary-fiction hybrid will elicit rich book-group discussions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)