I am so thankful for #netgalley and #groveatlantic for the chance to read this incredible selection of stories. What a voice Diane Oliver had. Her untimely death deprived us of so many potential years of her work. Thankfully we have this collection of very diverse stories that, as Tayari Jones mentioned in her introduction, are a time capsule of the 50s and 60s era for African Americans. And those African Americans represented are very diverse from wealthy doctors, comfortable middle-class families and women at the poverty level who need to take the leftovers of the white women they work for to feed their families. Two of my favourite stories are "Mint Juleps Not Served Here" and "The Closet at the Top of the Floor" which would make a great pair with Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman. I highly recommend this book.

A well written collection of short stories. I would recommend to my followers on my social media accounts. It's definitely worth checking out!

A few months back, a book club friend asked me why do I even need Netgalley? Like what are the benefits? Those were initial days of my starting using netgalley and even though I told her my reasons , I was not really able to convince her.

This book - "Neighbors and other stories" and books like this are the reason why I started using netgalley. And what is the best platform to get to know new and unknown, not so popular authors and their books , if not Netgalley?

Neighbors and other stories comes with an brilliant introduction from Tayari Jones , a black American woman author . Normally I do not read introductions but I read this one and was profoundly impressed with it. Because I did not know anything about Diane Oliver. Diane Oliver was just 22 years old when she published her short stories. sadly she left the world quite young. Being an African American woman author her stories ring with ugly truth and history of racism. All the short stories are brilliant and mind numbing. It left me with an ache I would not be able to describe in words.


These short stories are must read for everyone. Thank you very much netgalley and Grove Atlantic for this amazing ARC , I'm soon going to purchase this gem for my collection.

oof, i wanted to love this, but i sometimes struggle with short story collections, and that was precisely the case here. some of the stories were pretty good, but i didn’t really connect with other stories, so… yeah, it’s a shame that i didn’t love this one more.

Having finished this brilliant, bold, finely crafted collection, I felt at once a profound sense of gratitude and grief: reading Diane Oliver's stories feels much like being suddenly bestowed with a real, rare gift; in her untimely and premature death there is, too, the sense that a great talent was snatched away before it had the opportunity to realise its full potential.

Every story in the collection is sharp, and deft, and practically faultless - each sentence is expertly constructed (like all the best writers, the experience of reading Oliver's work is less like reading, per se, and more like visualising; seeing the world through the eyes of the characters themselves). Taken in combination, her stories provide a comprehensive study of what might be called "the Black experience" - in the sense that Oliver illustrates just how impossible it is to distill the richly varied, complicated lives of African Americans into a single "experience" at all. The titular story, as well as the one directly following it, offer haunting visions of the hidden cost of racial integration - the intergenerational and internalised traumas that affect those who put their lives on the line in the name of progress - and Oliver demonstrates a particular flair for representations of domestic and familial distress.

It is, however, in her more unusual and experimental work (playing particularly with form and genre) that her genius is really brought to light. 'Mint Juleps Not Served Here' is a delightfully dark, yet subtle take on the traditional horror story, while 'Frozen Voices' is the kind of fearless writing that takes your breath away - a piece of fiction that rivals the very best of the 20th century canon; here, it does not feel unreasonable to favourably compare Oliver to Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, or Zora Neale Hurston.

Thank you to @netgalley and Grove Atlantic for this ARC ebook!

If you are unfamiliar with the brilliant writing of Diane Oliver, you are not alone. An Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate, Oliver’s life was cut short at just 22 when she was killed in a car accident. Talented beyond her years, Oliver rendered life in the US South with an ease and an understanding that brought the intricate complexities of integration front and center. These are lyrical and layered stories exploring the full range of women’s lives.

Another collection of short stories that has blown me away. All the more amazing because Diane Oliver wrote these prior to her death in 1966 at the age of just 22. The introduction by Tayari Jones exalts the stories and Oliver’s writing and asks why she is not often included in the lists of famous and influential Authors from her time. Described as “crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America”, I had to request it from @netgalley and was thrilled when I was approved.

Each story captured my imagination and attention and held me throughout. They are written simply, factually, but with huge insight into the times. She does not shy away from any topic, but also writes about the mundane day to day occurrences in a way that make you reflect and ponder. I was so tense reading some of them that I was gripping my kindle and making my knuckles sore.

My personal favourites were "Mint Juleps not Served Here" – sooo good. It’s about a family sick of racism so they’ve built a home for themselves deep in a forest away from people, and what happens when they have a visitor of a ‘do good’ welfare woman trying to get them to enrol their child in school. And ‘Neighbors’ which, using Ruby Bridges as inspiration tells the story of the night before a little boy is due to be the first child to integrate an all white school. It is told through the eyes of his big sister who is fearful of how this will be for her little brother. It is a not often looked at angle, and even in the introduction Tayari Jones mentions how it was an important first step towards desegregation in schools and although we’ve all seen the pictures of the little girl being escorted into the school, no one shows the inside which was empty as other parents had kept their white children home. No one talks about how it would have felt for Ruby or her family being that first one at such a young age.

Also – look at that cover!!! What a work of art. It is frameable.

Thank you so much @netgalley for my gifted ebook. I loved it and would highly recommend to anyone.

I absolutely loved reading this book of short stories. I was completely drawn into the topics and could not stop reading it.