Thy Neighbor: A Novel

by Norah Vincent

Norah Vincent’s first two books—the New York Times bestseller Self-Made Man and Voluntary Madness—were masterworks of immersion journalism. Now Vincent unleashes her considerable talents in a spellbinding novel that’s as provocative and absorbing as her acclaimed nonfiction.

            Since his parents’ violent deaths thirteen years ago, Nick Walsh has been living alone in his childhood home, drinking, drugging, and debauching himself into oblivion. Deranged by his relentless sorrow, he begins spying on his neighbors via hidden cameras and microphones. As he observes all the strange, sad, and terrifying things that people do when they think no one is watching, Nick begins to unravel the shocking truth about how and why his parents died.

• ISBN10: 0143123661
• ISBN13: 9780143123668
• Publish Date: 30 July 2013 (first published 1 August 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: IN
• Publisher: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin Books India
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780143123668

Reviews

[Angie]

Thy Neighbor is not something I would have picked out on my own. I happened to win a copy and decided to read it. Maybe it would surprise me? Well, it did. I was ready to hate it based on the first chapter, but once I settled into Nick's life, I was hooked. He is a severely screwed up person, and there's a lot of severely screwed up things happening around him. Thirteen years ago, his parents died in a murder/suicide. Also around that time, a neighbor girl went missing and hasn't been heard from since. Now, Nick is living in his parents' house, drinking and drugging himself into oblivion, and spying on the neighbors using hidden cameras. Then he starts finding disturbing poems written in his handwriting on pink stationary.

I'll start with why I almost hated Thy Neighbor. The first few chapters were awful. I felt like the author was trying too hard to establish her protagonist as male. I'm sure this was intended to be character development and give us a sense of who Nick was, but I found it incredibly irritating. There's lots of talk of working out, masturbation, pooping, anonymous sex, and plenty of swearing. Not that there's anything wrong with any of these things (except maybe the pooping), but it was a lot all at once and without real focus. Nick isn't very likeable, but he wasn't meant to be in the beginning. That introduction was just over-the-top.

Nick is smothered by his grief. He just cannot move on, because he has no clue what happened the night his parents died. He spent most of his life away at boarding school and college, so he has very few memories of his parents to use to piece it together. But his videos of the neighbors somehow trigger events that start to make sense of his parents' mysterious deaths. No one is who they seem in public, not even his parents, and he's not ready for the shock that he receives once he learns who those poems are really from (and who they're for). I was honestly shocked by what happened. Sure, I figured some things out on my own, but when the full truth comes out? Dang.

Thy Neighbor touches on a lot of serious issues. It's quite a heavy read once the story gets going. The things that happen in Nick's neighborhood are just awful, and it makes me wonder what's going on in my own backyard. I probably would have liked this one more if it wasn't so stuffy and jammed packed with literary references that went straight over my head. But that's why tend to avoid Literary Fiction to begin with. I am glad I gave Thy Neighbor a chance though.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.