Lessons From the Neighbors Next Door: What Literature Teaches Us About Proximity and Responsibility
Who is the best neighbor in literature? And perhaps more urgently: what do we owe the people who live closest to us? Most of us don’t get to choose our neighbors any more than we choose our relatives, and yet they occupy a unique moral and psychological space in our lives. They are close enough to inconvenience, annoy, insult, and occasionally wound us — and close enough to surprise us with unexpected kindness. Does proximity create responsibility?
That question sits at the heart of my novel A Gracious Neighbor. Its protagonist, Martha Hale, is a friendly but socially clumsy wife and mother in a manicured, affluent neighborhood. Isolated by her failed attempts to integrate into the local social ecosystem, Martha becomes enthralled when the glamorous Minnie Foster — once a classmate — moves in next door. Martha’s eagerness to rekindle a teenage connection spirals into a fixation that she convinces herself is benevolence. Her attempts to defend Minnie’s reputation are well-intentioned, but dangerous — a reminder that neighborliness can curdle when filtered through insecurity, longing, and social pressure.
Fred Rogers once asked viewers to imagine neighborhoods built on daily kindness. It’s a vision worth pursuing, but literature often reminds us that real neighborhoods are far more complicated: rule-bound, gossip-fueled, stratified, and opaque. Many of us know this terrain well. We wonder what happens behind the curtains across the street, and we read stories of neighbors for the same reason we look through fence slats — curiosity wrapped in recognition.
Here are several novels that reveal what happens when people share geography but not assumptions, resources, or values — and what those collisions can teach us about the communities we inhabit.
Little Fires Everywhere — Celeste Ng
In Shaker Heights, Cleveland — a meticulously planned suburb — the Warren family’s arrival disrupts the Richardson family’s faith in rules, order, and upward mobility. As their lives intertwine, the façade of progressive harmony disintegrates under the heat of racism, class tension, motherhood, and fractured belonging. Ng’s “slow burn” thriller suggests that the most combustible things in a neighborhood aren’t the houses — they’re the assumptions that hold them together.
Ask Again, Yes — Mary Beth Keane
Two police officers buy neighboring homes, their children grow up inseparable, and a shared tragedy forces both families apart. Years later, the children reunite and attempt to build a life despite the debris of the past. Keane refuses sentimentality — her characters are wounded, complicated, and painfully recognizable. The novel quietly asks whether neighboring creates a unique kind of grief, because the people nearest our walls inevitably become entwined with our stories.
Good Neighbors — Sarah Langan
When the unpolished Wilde family moves onto Maple Street in Long Island, their mere presence punctures the neighborhood’s self-image. An actual sinkhole soon opens up, swallowing a child and unleashing a torrent of gossip, fear, and collective cruelty. Langan lays bare what happens when a community’s social contract dissolves: neighbors don’t simply turn away from one another, they weaponize proximity.
The Ice Storm — Rick Moody
In 1970s New Canaan — wealthy, wooded, architecturally pristine — the Hood family simmers through Watergate, sexual revolution, and private despair. Moody’s bleak, elegant portrait of suburban malaise reveals how status, comfort, and privacy can produce alienation rather than solidarity. The neighbors here do not feud; they simply fail one another by refusing to see.
The Husbands — Chandler Baker
Dynasty Ranch looks like a feminist dream: wives with power and husbands who fold the laundry. But the satire reveals how much labor, visible and invisible, marriages and neighborhoods require to function. Baker riffs on The Stepford Wives to expose how gendered domestic expectations corrode trust inside households and, by extension, the communities built from them.
The Couple Next Door — Shari Lapena
A dinner party next door becomes a nightmare when a baby vanishes, confirming an old neighborhood truism: nobody actually knows what’s happening behind the doors they pass each day. The mystery underscores how thin the walls are — physically and morally — between private lives.
A Good Neighborhood — Therese Anne Fowler
Narrated by the neighborhood itself, Fowler’s novel pits two households against each other in a fight over a damaged tree and a forbidden romance. Race, class, and property become proxies for belonging. The collective “we” reminds us that a neighborhood is more than a cluster of roofs — it is an organism.
The Room of Lost Things — Stella Duffy
In South London, an aging dry cleaner trains his successor as customers cycle through with lost garments and quiet lives. The novel is gentle, poetic, and humane — honoring the ordinary, fleeting relationships that define real neighborhoods more than dramatic scandals ever could.
A Man Called Named Ove -- Fredrick Backman
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman is a touching and emotional novel about love, loss, and the power of community. At first, Ove seems like a grumpy old man who has no patience for anyone. He follows strict rules, dislikes change, and believes things should always be done the right way—his way. However, as the story unfolds, readers discover there is much more to Ove than just his tough exterior. His story is both heartwarming and inspiring, showing us the importance of kindness, understanding, and the impact we have on the lives of those around us. This is a must read in my opinion.
So What Do We Owe Our Neighbors?
Taken together, these books argue that neighbors matter not because they are perfect or pure but because they are unavoidable. Proximity forces recognition. It demands a kind of moral imagination. The people beside us — in duplexes, cul-de-sacs, apartment blocks, and prewar row houses — are woven into our days whether we invite them in or not.
Perhaps the real question isn’t who is the best neighbor in literature, but what literature is trying to make us see: that neighborliness is a fragile social technology. It can foster kindness or cruelty, belonging or suspicion. And it can collapse with surprising speed when we stop tending to it.
If Mister Rogers dreamed of a neighborhood built on one kind word a day, these writers remind us why that dream is difficult — and why it’s worth pursuing anyway.
MORE INFORMATION
Take the Engaged Neighbor pledge and become part of a movement! The pledge outlines five categories and 20 principles to guide you toward becoming an engaged neighbor. Sign the pledge at https://nomoregoodneighbors.com. Individuals who take the pledge do get special invitations to future events online and in person. Contact the blog author, David L. Burton via email at dburton541@yahoo.com or visit his website at http://engagedneighbor.com.
Comments
Post a Comment