Welcome friend! A recent release this year, Cristina Mîrzoi’s latest novella, Neighbourly Mischief, tickled me with its dark humor. If you’re a fan of stories where humor and darkness collide, you have to check out this book! Take a look at what the story is about:
Cristina Mîrzoi | Goodreads
In this peculiar story, we follow the lives of a few distinctive individuals living in an old apartment building, ranging from angsty youth to middle-aged couples and senior citizens. Sorrows, insecurities, longings, frustrations, and, above all, secrets are concealed within each of these characters in an intricate maze of dysfunctional yet humorous relationships.
The intrusion of an outsider on a serene night unexpectedly impacts the building and its inhabitants, forever altering their lives and strangely mending some of their inner wounds.
Aristotle famously stated that humans are social creatures. The daily interactions among people, intentional or not, play a significant role in shaping their lives. As our characters struggle against it, loneliness becomes the driving force behind the central conflict, acting as the true antagonist.
Content notes: This novella contains mentions of death, animal cruelty, foul language, graphic medical descriptions, alcohol addiction and drugs.
Neighbourly Mischief – Review
Neighourly Mischief begins with a police transcript where I met a lot of the characters. The building administrator, Gilbert, has been missing for a few days and the last place that he was seen was at the apartment building. None of the residents have a kind thing to say about the administrator and it becomes clear very quickly that the latest round of grievances involve a recent plumbing job that led to a rat infestation.
The following chapters span 8 days, showing Gilbert’s whereabouts through the interactions with the residents. Cristina Mîrzoi created distinct characters with their unique struggles, motivations, personalities and quirks. There is Dylan, a young unemployed man who worships his beautiful girlfriend and knows he needs to get himself together or she will leave him. Hugh, his neighbor, is a happily married man prone to looking too deeply into things. Jimmy and Norman have lived in the building all their lives and one envies the other. While Jimmy is successful and married, Norman is an odd-ball and as the story progresses, it becomes clear just how different he is from the rest of the residents of the building. Nellie is an old woman who watched the two boys grow up and turns to them in her bad times. Josephine is a widowed woman whose children left her in this apartment building. Prudence is the building manager who takes in all the complaints and tries her best to manage the building, her family and a very disgruntled Gilbert. There are also perspectives from the plumbers. It took me a little while to get used to all the characters but the story is written so well and it was such a page turner that I could not help watching these people’s lives and getting to know them well.
Neighourly Mischief is the portrayal of how strangers’ lives come together in odd ways. It aptly portrays how sometimes, it is easier to turn to your next door neighbor than your wife, particularly when you know how interested she would be in the problem. The neighbours don’t really want to know each other but when circumstances bring some of them together, they learn, in the case of Hugh and Dylan, that they can be friends. They learn about themselves too – when people they see day in and day out annoy them and they suddenly stop, they feel a sense of concern, like in the case of Josepehine and Nellie. In other interactions, it becomes clear that they are very different people and would rather not live in the same building together.
I enjoyed the dark humour of this book and how Gilbert’s disappearance came to be. Dylan is a scatterbrain which endeared him to me. I felt the number of characters was just right – even one more would have been too much and one less might not have shown the variety of relationships that can coexist in one place.
Overall, Neighbourly Mischief is a masterful blend of dark humor and poignant observation, wrapped in a tale of seemingly mundane lives intersecting in unexpected ways. It is indeed a peculiar tale. The disappearance of the much hated building administrator becomes the catalyst for a series of events that are as absurd as they are revealing, exposing the quirks and hidden depths of each character. Cristina Mîrzoi has skillfully woven dark humor throughout the narrative, making me chuckle at the absurdity of the situations while also reflecting on the underlying truths about human nature. In the end, this is a sharp, witty exploration of the odd connections and rivalries that flourish in close quarters.
Check back tomorrow to read an excerpt and interview with the author. Meantime, add this book to your Goodreads shelf.
Many thanks to Cristina for providing me a complimentary copy of this book for an honest review.
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