The Neighborhood Division
Jeff Vande Zande
Two shots realism, one shot speculative, a dash of horror—the genre-bending stories in
Jeff Vande Zande’s The Neighborhood Division and Other Stories shows us what happens
when suburbia takes on a rebellious, sometimes eerie and always dangerous, life of its own.
From a family trapped in their own basement by an aggressive home renovation to a tenant’s crusade
to save his building from collapsing under the load of his neighbors’ excessive possessions,
these stories reveal the unexpected joys and perils of taking a closer look at our most familiar neighborhoods.
- Laura Hulthen Thomas, author of States of Motion
In this poignant collection of stories, Jeff Vande Zande writes of individuals holding on in quiet desperation
to a fragmented sense of belonging and personal autonomy within a larger world—a neighborhood as such—controlled
by rigid systems of power, conservatism, cruelty, seclusion and enforced conformity. These stories catalogue the quiet,
suppressed rage and anguish of individuals who’ve lost something poignant and private unto themselves—be it love,
independence, bravery, autonomy, security, purpose, place, relationship, self-confidence or well-being.
At a wider angle, Vande Zande extends an empathic, concerned hand to the human biosphere—be it a neighborhood nearby,
perhaps yours or mine—inextricably being denuded of personal freedom, human kindness and creative initiative.
In the most heroic story of this collection he invites us to consider—as if imploring us onward—that,
“You forget how powerful you can be. One person.”
- Ken Meisel, author of Our Common Souls: New & Selected Poems of Detroit
Don’t be fooled by what initially seems familiar in Vande Zande’s stories. An unsettling, almost surreal quality
quickly spins the characters into uncertain territory where you truly don’t know what will happen. Each of them
face harrowing challenges that are theirs alone, and there's no going back. I found these stories as compelling as they were chilling.
- Linda K. Sienkiewicz, author of In the Context of Love
Turgenev said that we all come from beneath “The Overcoat,” and the wardrobe one discovers in Jeff Vande Zande’s
The Neighborhood Division and Other Stories truly unbuttons startling new revelations. These fictions are a
Sartor Resartus of the form and content found in the linings of the heart, fierce and bold patterns that brilliantly
retailor the whole grotesque haberdashery of Winesburg, Ohio. This read was quite the runway show.
- Michael Martone, author of The Moon Over Wapakoneta and Brooding
