Our Next-Door Neighbors

Lucien and Silvia Wade have cultivated a quiet life together, a home of peace and order in a uncertain world. Then the Polydore family moves in next door with their sprawling brood of children, and the Wades' carefully constructed serenity is suddenly, spectacularly shattered. Noise, chaos, and small invaders who treat the Wade home as an extension of their own begin to wear away at Lucien especially, who must confront what he really wants from life. What begins as near-maddening intrusion slowly reveals itself as something else entirely: an unexpected door into warmth, noise, and the messy blessings of community. Maniates writes with sharp wit and genuine tenderness about the collision between solitude and family, and what it means to let the chaos of life in.