{"id":7345,"date":"2026-09-22T15:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7345"},"modified":"2026-09-22T15:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T15:16:12","slug":"the-neighborhood-dames-by-laura-stanfill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7345","title":{"rendered":"The Neighborhood Dames by Laura Stanfill"},"content":{"rendered":"

A subversive portrait of female friendship and feminist activism set in the years leading up to and during Prohibition<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Fueled by a string of expertly managed mysteries (both personal and criminal), The Neighborhood Dames<\/em> is historical fiction at its grounded best\u2014challenging social norms and hopeful of change.<\/p>\n

The Neighborhood Dames<\/em> opens with former songwriter and aspiring shut-in Violet Radford mourning her father\u2019s death in a fire the night before. Violet, numb with grief, stares out the window, unsure if the white flakes she sees through panes are ashes or snow in September. Stanfill gives the reader full access to Violet\u2019s state of mind: \u201cA fire would be convenient. The evidence of her father\u2019s boot-legging would burn along with the first drafts of songs nobody should ever find.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> Violet\u2019s characterization is incredibly efficient, as seemingly innocuous moments lay the foundation for the many mysteries, small and large, that fuel the book. Who set the fire that killed Violet\u2019s boot-legger father? And why should no one ever find these song drafts?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Stanfill\u2019s gift for description serves a similar dual-function. \u201cThirty-two years old, her life folded and stashed in this house-shaped drawer<\/em><\/strong>,\u201d<\/strong> tells us so much about Violet\u2019s existence to this point. But it also establishes her reclusive vulnerability in the wake of her father\u2019s death, moments before her safe, \u201chouse-shaped\u201d<\/em><\/strong> life is overturned and its mysteries exposed.<\/p>\n

The Neighborhood Dames<\/em> is, ultimately, a novel about female friendship, and Violet\u2019s craving for isolation is, indeed, the product of her best friend Minnow\u2019s death. Violet\u2019s devotion to Minnow creates a visceral connection from the past to the present, when Minnow\u2019s sassy, trousers-wearing daughter, Sally, shows up on her doorstep offering condolences. Sally\u2019s arrival turns the key on the book\u2019s engine, as Violet\u2019s anxious internal voice turns crackly and maternal in Sally\u2019s presence. Their dynamic adds depth to Violet\u2019s character and a great energetic boost to the plot.<\/p>\n

Stanfill switches points of view regularly to give the reader an easy, broadly scoped picture of the world of the book. While Violet is certainly the protagonist, Sally\u2019s perspective is central and a real pleasure to read. Stanfill gives Sally a bright, unstoppable intelligence\u2014\u201clike a free-falling dumbwaiter, her need to know plunges into the room\u201d\u2014<\/em><\/strong>that is very much at odds with Violet\u2019s caution. Sally and Violet are natural foils, not combative, but compatible, much as Minnow and Violet must have been.<\/p>\n

Sally is curious and intelligent. Through her, Stanfill begins to hint at the relevant mysteries woven into the fabric of their New Jersey suburb. Unfortunately, Sally\u2019s reporter father Matthew is as anxious to keep her incurious and marriageable as he is to keep her away from Violet. The question of why he is so determined to keep his daughter away from his dead wife\u2019s best friend is one of many well-deployed mysteries, one that ends with a satisfying conclusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer mom is a statue in these tales, draped in the fabric of their praise.\u00a0[\u2026] What if Dad had warned her away from the Radfords not because of illegal activity but because Miss Radford knew her mother?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A small, unobtrusive mystery about a pie with a slice missing creates a compelling through-line from the main plot in the1920s to the secondary timeline of Violet\u2019s childhood. The second timeline provides background on the Neighborhood Dames, a subversive group of women intent upon undermining the domestic and institutional patriarchy in their conventional town, slowly offering answers the questions Stanfill seeds in the \u201cpresent day.\u201d The pie and the other incomplete edible offerings connect a still unknowing Violet to the group. The detail of the missing pieces also becomes an elegant extension of the book\u2019s philosophy of resistance.<\/p>\n

While the 1900s thread lacks the energy of Violet\u2019s present, which is fueled, in large part, by her wonderful relationship with Sally, the secondary plot is<\/em> compelling as it addresses the mysteries of the Prohibition era plot. Nothing in The Neighborhood Dames<\/em> is wasted\u2014even Stanfill\u2019s sentence-level turns of phrase support larger points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a movement, the Neighborhood Dames are quietly subversive, and Stanfill\u2019s characters are diverse in equally effective ways. The book\u2019s resistance leader is a Black woman, Sally\u2019s best friend is gender ambiguous and there are various forms of queerness, neurodivergence and mental health status depicted throughout, but never \u201cpointedly.\u201d The characters are simply allowed to go about their business.<\/p>\n

I greatly enjoyed everything The Neighborhood<\/em> Dames<\/em> had to offer. Stanfill\u2019s ability to use multiple mysteries to drive the plot without distracting from the book\u2019s emotional and historical DNA is nothing short of impressive. Mystery fuels the action, but history and intergenerational friendship lend the The Neighborhood Dames<\/em> a readably lovely heft.<\/p>\n

The post The Neighborhood Dames by Laura Stanfill<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A subversive portrait of female friendship and feminist activism set in the years leading up to and during Prohibition Fueled by a string of expertly managed mysteries (both personal and criminal), The Neighborhood Dames is historical fiction at its grounded best\u2014challenging social norms and hopeful of change. The Neighborhood Dames opens with former songwriter and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}