Keese is clearly intended to be a twentieth-century American Everyman. It is essential to the theme that the other characters not be fully developed, but rather remain as two-dimensional figures.

Harry and Ramona are embodiments of surface good nature and vulgarity; the Greavys are textbook illustrations of contemptuousness; Keese's wife Enid seems blissfully unaware of any social undercurrents; and his daughter Elaine is self-absorbed and enigmatic, at times even appearing to be a fellow conspirator with Harry and Ramona. Berger's earlier novel, Sneaky People (1975), portrayed a small group of Midwesterners who hid their true interests from each other; in Neighbors, since the reader is restricted to Keese's point of view, the effect is like experiencing Sneaky People without being taken into the mind of more than one character.

Berger uses certain surrealistic techniques to heighten the irony of the novel.

Not only are many events left ambiguous and...