Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Thy Neighbor: A Novel





At thirty-four, Nick Walsh is a broken, deeply cynical man. Since the violent deaths of his parents thirteen years earlier, he has been living alone in his childhood home in the suburban Midwest, drinking, drugging, and debauching himself into oblivion. A measure of solace is provided by his newly found relationship with Monica, a mysterious woman who seems to harbor as many secrets as he does.
Obsessed with understanding the circumstances surrounding his parents' deaths and deranged by his relentless sorrow, Nick begins a campaign of spying on his neighbors via hidden cameras and microphones he has covertly installed in their houses. As he observes with amusement and disbelief all the strange, sad, and terrifying things that his neighbors do to themselves and to one another, and as he, in turn, learns that he is being stalked, he begins to slowly unravel the shocking truth about how and why his parents died. (from Goodreads)

My Thoughts

When we first meet Nick, he is one crazy dude. Crazy as in he doesn’t have both oars in the water. Or, both oars are in the water but they’re on the same side of the boat. Or, my personal favorite, he has both oars in the water but no boat! Get my drift? We learn very early in the story that when Nick was twenty-one, his Dad shot his Mom, and then turned the gun on himself. Nick had no idea why this happened and has spent the thirteen years since wondering what events took place the would lead to such a horrible occurrence.

Because of where Nick is mentally, he needs some level of hyperstimulation and decides to start spying on his neighbors. What he sees while spying is sometimes difficult to read - the idea of what goes on behind the closed doors of seemingly “normal” people.

When I first finished this book, I thought I would give it a 3 out of 5 star rating. To be honest with you, I really thought - how does spying on his neighbors tie in to Nicks search for what happened with his parents? Ohhhh - I assure you, it does. The more I thought about it, the more I felt the author had written a very well put together story. It is very interesting how Ms. Vincent ties all the pieces together.

My thanks to Penguin Group and Netgalley for allowing me to read this ARC for my unbiased review.

Publish date:  August 6, 2012

My rating:  4 of 5 stars

3 comments:

  1. Your review had me laughing..i love the oars!!! Adding to my list :)

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  2. I have this book to review from Netgalley but have yet to read it. I loved your review, the oars part was funny but i totally got your drift there haha x

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