Someone We Know: A Novel

In her groundbreaking 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Frieden explored “the problem that has no name,” a nagging feeling of emptiness and discontent afflicting suburban housewives, akin to an existential despair:

Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’ (Friedan, Betty. “The Problem That Has No Name.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 100 no. 9, 2010).

In her book, Frieden discusses the cultural and societal fallout of confining intelligent, imaginative, and, in many cases, highly educated women in the claustrophobic monoculture of the suburbs, which offer few outlets for their mental energy, ambition, or sense of individuality. She also noted that many housewives, bored by routine and deprived of the sense of validation and appreciation that might come from a career, looked for personal fulfillment through sex, often leading to extramarital affairs. Others tried to “live through” their children, becoming overinvolved in their children’s lives. In Someone We Know, the young Amanda Pierce and the middle-aged Becky Harris both embody this “nameless” ennui: Jaded by their marriages, suburban surroundings, and unstimulating sex lives, both women have extramarital affairs based on proximity—Amanda with two of her neighbors; Becky with a younger man, Amanda’s husband, who lives directly behind her. The men engage in these affairs due to the same ennui.

Multiple studies suggest that middle-class suburbanites, regardless of age or gender, are significantly more prone to depression and anxiety than their urban counterparts, largely due to a lack of variety and stimulation (Garcia, Evan. “Study Finds Large Cities Promote Lower Rates of Depression.” WTTW, 2021). To some, the sprawl and visual monotony of the suburbs foster a sense of boredom and isolation. By contrast, the density and variety of inner-city communities seem to offer richer and more plentiful social interchanges, as well as a stimulating cultural life, leading to better overall health for their residents.

Since the mid-twentieth century—the golden age of suburban sprawl—American authors and satirists such as John Cheever, Richard Yates, Jason Diamond, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Ira Levin have made the suburbs almost a literary byword for tedium and conformity. Many of these literary works feature bedroom communities for residents who work elsewhere and endure long, tedious commutes to and from their jobs. Alcoholism and adultery are commonplace in these suburban narratives.

Children and teens, whose social lives and freedom of travel in the suburbs are even more constricted than their parents’, struggle with isolation. Suburban teenagers show higher rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse than their city peers (“Professor Luthar’s Study Finds Suburban Teens More Prone to Substance Abuse, Stress and Delinquency.” Columbia University Teachers College, 2002). Someone We Know explores these topics through 16-year-old Raleigh Sharpe’s petty crimes, fueled by his feelings of boredom and powerlessness, and Adam Newell’s depressive alcoholism and violence. In the suburbs’ large houses, children and adults may have more privacy than inner-city dwellers, but they are consequently less involved in each other’s lives. Someone We Know’s restless teens and the anxious parents who love them but do not quite know them trigger a deadly combination in the eerie landscape of the Aylesford suburbs.