[The chain of events in "Neighbors"] makes no sense. Nor will the novel ever provide a key to why Earl's placid suburban life has suddenly gone haywire. On the other hand, it makes all the sense in the world, the way a dialogue by Eugene Ionesco makes sense. "Neighbors" parodies all the rituals of neighborliness—the competitiveness, the bonhommie, the striving for civility in the face of what seems to be barbarism—and compresses into a single day a lifetime of over-the-back-fence strife.
I do wish the surprise ending flowed a little more logically out of the plot's beguiling irrationality, and that Mr. Berger had explained the mysterious reappearance of a missing house key—which pokes a small black hole in the plot into which a little of its energy leaks. Still, I read the novel feeling by turns curious, irritated, enraged, amused, and frightened, but never for an instant did I lose interest. Robert Frost may have argued that good fences make good neighbors. Thomas Berger demonstrates that shotguns and kicks in the the groin do even better. (p. 240)
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "'Neighbors'," in The New York Times, Section III (© 1980 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), April 1, 1980 (and reprinted in Books of the Times, Vol. III, No. 6, 1980, pp. 239-40).
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