Thy Neighbor

Edoardo Ballerini perfectly captures the patronizing, pretentious, angry, disdainful, egotistical, and vainglorious Nick Walsh, a complicated 34-year-old drunk and loser. When his parents died in a murder/suicide, he was catapulted into a life of excess that has culminated in spying on his neighbors, all of whom are just about as damaged as he is. Ballerini's dark, authoritative performance features crisp intonation and considerable acting skills. However, the story is a fatuous display of crude language, expansive vocabulary, and tedious litany of haughty views on a multitude of subjects--all wrapped in a story line that is disturbing, with characters even a mother couldn't love. An exceptional narration. A.C.P. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

June 11, 2012
In Vincent’s disappointing fiction debut, narrator Nick, equally misanthropic and self-hating, drinks all night and feels sorry for himself all day (“Depressed? Destroyed? Crushed beneath the boot heel of fate? Why, yes. I suppose so”)—not without cause, perhaps, considering the horrific family crime that derailed his comfortable suburban existence more than a decade ago. He continues to reside in the home in which the crime happened, and to distract himself from his misery, he enlists a cable TV installer to plant hidden recording equipment in his ill-behaved neighbors’ bedrooms, bathrooms, and anywhere else that might provide a chance for Nick to see something awful (which, of course, he does). When Nick, desperate to get out of his own head, befriends his one decent neighbor, Mrs. Bloom, a widow with no family who suffered a tragedy years ago, he discovers the heartbreaking event that links her life and his. But what part in all this does the dangerously unhappy family next door play? We’ll have to wait and see. Vincent’s prose is choppy and overwrought, the characters for the most part unpleasant. This is a disappointing foray into psychological fiction from a journalist known for the high-concept nonfiction books Self-Made Man and Voluntary Madness.