PositiveNew York Times Book ReviewThis reads like a wink from von Ziegesar herself, and as a fan of breaking the fourth wall, I hope it is ... A lot is happening in Cobble Hill (infidelity, multiple fires, theft, frequent drug use) and yet the novel sustains a calm, plotless schema ... Von Ziegesar easily dips into the psyches of adults, teenagers and children, often on the same page, and she lets us into the interlocking structure of the story quite quickly. There’s much to be thankful for in a novel that doesn’t waste a reader’s time ... At times, the novel is the fun fall romp that it was intended to be. But the self-consciously idiosyncratic characters in an intensely geographically accurate portrayal of Brooklyn also present an odd “for us, by us” veneer; it often reads like a joke you had to be there for. Much of the appeal of this novel relies upon its references to gentrified Brooklyn. The magic comes in the form of a jolt of recognition; that feeling when a character in a novel shares your birthday, or when you see your neighbor’s face on the local news ... much like the neighborhood it’s named for, Cobble Hill may delight readers of a certain age and income bracket.
Therese Anne Fowler
PanThe New York Times Book ReviewIn the same way that activism cannot be sold for $26, black characters cannot be bought when they lack depth and accessibility ... If you want to know how to feel about these characters, the novel will tell you ... Fowler’s portrayal of white supremacy is similarly hampered ... Racism is depicted much like death or pregnancy, in that it is an all-or-nothing, binary state of being ... This binary may make sense in the comforting world of A Good Neighborhood but it reveals little about the world we live in, where good intentions often nourish white supremacy, the way sugar feeds yeast ... a pitch-perfect example of how literary endeavors of allyship — not to be confused with indictments of systemic oppression — can limit a novel’s understanding of human behavior. It provides the same frustration one feels at Thanksgiving, when your self-described open-minded aunt won’t shut up about the beautiful gay couple she waves to at the gym. Is it possible to enjoy a work of art with bad politics? Absolutely. I’ve seen “Pretty Woman” nine times, minimum. But when a story is presented as art and activism, it becomes the reader’s responsibility to take the novel at its repetitive word. Here, in this good neighborhood, it is not a tragedy that violence happens to black men, but rather, that it can happen to one of the good ones. If America is a house on fire, A Good Neighborhood is mostly concerned with exiting quietly, in a single-file line.
