One of my favorite horror podcasts is This Is Horror. One of the things I love about it, other than their ability to get all the top names in horror to come and talk about the genre, is the entire premise behind their name. The name This is Horror implies that horror doesn’t apply to works that fit into a very specific criteria (“This is horror,” they might say, or “that is horror”). Their widening of the genre definitions has allowed me to notice and review an excellent book, Sara Langan’s Good Neighbors. While it might be missing the vengeful spirits and wholesale slaughter of many horror novels, the book showcases a particular breed of monster: the human being in the throes of groupthink.
If traditional horror has taught its consumers anything,
it’s that the most innocent sounding street names (looking at you, Elm Street)
will be inverted from a suburban utopia to a maddening dystopia, and Long
Island’s Maple Street is no exception (although it could also be a nod to the
Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” which is its own
tale of suburban paranoia). The Wilde family, including former rock star Arlo
and his former-cocktail-waitress wife Gertie, have entered suburbia and
discovered a slew of neighbors that seem welcoming at first, particularly alpha
neighbor Rhea Schraeder. But a sinkhole appears in their neighborhood just as a
malignant rumor springs to life among the neighbors. What follows for the
Wildes and the neighbors of Maple Street is a descent into paranoia and madness
beginning with accusations made and ending with an American tragedy that has
seared itself into the consciousness of those who have the misfortune to live
in Langan’s fictional universe.
Langan’s novel is a masterclass in using multiple
storytelling techniques, particularly epistolary fiction, to build tension
while keeping the story moving. There’s the crime podcast/documentary feel as
Langan incorporates interviews, book excerpts, and even the mindset of actors
who will play those who have become infamous thanks to what happens in the
story. The knowledge that this pretense of community will all unravel hangs
over the story, even as the characters, the likable if flawed protagonists and
the unlikable hypocritical antagonists alike, are drawn into the story’s
gravity, much like the kids of the story are drawn to the sinkhole. The
environmental message seems tangential, mere window dressing to add
strangeness, but Langan also interjects some pointed commentary about how
stories have multiple viewpoints fed by multiple kinds of media. Even as she
offers different points of view of how the horrors on Maple Street unfolded,
she never flinches from the roiling emotions and slithering insecurities that
make these characters both frightening and all too human.
