A parallel friendship is that of Julia’s and Shelly’s mothers, Gertie and Rhea. How does the arc of the mothers’ friendship mirror that of their daughters’？ How does it differ?
The suburban setting of Good Neighbors is integral to the book itself. How does Sarah Langan describe Maple Street? What are its physical characteristics? How do these characteristics influence the neighbors who live there? Do you think this novel could have been set anywhere other than a wealthy suburb?
Maple Street is in the middle of two environmental crises: a heatwave and a sinkhole. Why do you think the author chose to incorporate very physical emergencies into the internal emergencies the characters experience in the novel?
What typically suburban, idyllic summertime activities are distorted by the sinkhole and its surrounding tragedies? Would you consider Good Neighbors satirical?
Discuss the author’s choice to include book excerpts and newspaper articles throughout the book. Did you feel this was an effective storytelling technique? Did any of the characters’ fates surprise you?
What qualities make the Wildes good scapegoats for the problems on Maple Street? Why do the longtime residents of the street believe the rumors about the Wildes so readily?
Almost every resident of Maple Street hides a secret. What are the neighbors’ attitudes about keeping or revealing secrets? What does it say about their characters?
Was there one character or family in the neighborhood whose story most intrigued you? How did your opinions change as you learned more about them?
While gossip may have fueled many of the plot’s shocking events, all of the rumors and whispers stem from fear. Discuss what you think each of the main characters fears. What are the collective fears of the neighborhood? How is fear expressed on Maple Street?
Do you feel that Shelly receives justice by the end of the novel?
Enhance Your Book Club
Sarah Langan has written several horror novels, including Audrey’s Door and The Missing. Choose one of Sarah’s other novels to read, and compare and contrast it with Good Neighbors.
Good Neighbors has been compared to works by authors Celeste Ng and Shirley Jackson. Choose one of the novels or short stories by these writers and discuss what it has in common with Sarah Langan’s novel.
With its evocative setting, plot twists, and large cast of characters, Good Neighbors feels perfect for a TV series or a film. Who would you cast in it? What elements of the novel do you think would be challenging to portray on screen?
A Conversation with Sarah Langan
When did you decide you wanted to include fictional newspaper articles and book excerpts about the “Maple Street Murders” in your novel? Why did you feel you needed to include an outside point of view among the many other points of view in the novel?
I’ve always liked adding texture to my stories by inventing primary and secondary sources. It gives the work a context. I wrote a whole bunch of articles for my novel Audrey’s Door, too. In that book, I had a lot of fun writing a fake New Yorker article about a thinly veiled Spalding Gray. I also invented a religion and architectural philosophy that I pretended was real and blogged about. I didn’t intend to trick anybody; I thought readers would think it was funny. So, on speaking engagements, I’d say, “Guys, I made it up.” And sometimes readers would say, “No. It’s real. I read about it on the internet.”
With Good Neighbors, I hadn’t planned on including other sources—I thought I was writing a straight horror novel like The Missing. But somewhere along the line, it stopped being horror, and I realized I wanted to provide a wider context for what I was doing.
What I like about citing made-up articles and books is that it allows me to provide a context for my work. It also makes my story mythic within the world it inhabits. In that way, it feels more real, like it could happen in this America, too. So, I was shooting for that. I was hoping that by mentioning Broadway and other touchstones, that the story would feel less like fiction.
What elements of suburban horror were you most excited to explore?
I tend not to think about what I’m doing most of the time, or why I’m doing it. But I think the main driver for me had less to do with suburbia than the impact of Facebook on real people. I was trying to understand how and why this weird medium had caused so much damage. And it has done real damage, not just to our political system, but to our culture and to our human relationships. We’ve become very polarized, not for real reasons, but for invented reasons, and those inventors are cashing in.
As I was working on this story, I was also interested in the personal blind spots we all developed in childhood, to survive. As adults, these coping mechanisms no longer work, and are, in fact, harmful. Rhea’s forgetfulness, her tendency to block things out, was surely helpful while she shared a house with a blackout alcoholic. But as an adult, those same coping mechanisms are disastrous. She knows this on some level, but she’s terrified of letting go of the only behavior that ever protected her. Worse, if she does let go, she’ll have to confront the reason it exists in the first place—her dad was a mess. Her childhood was horrible.