By Leslie Lindsay How well do you really know your neighbors? How well do you know yourself? These are the overarching questions explored in this fiction debut by Helen Cooper. WRITERS INTERVIEWING WRITERS ALWAYS WITH A BOOK Helen Cooper & Leslie Lindsay in conversation From the U.K., Helen Cooper’s background in teaching with an emphasis on Academic Writing. Her creative writing has been published in Mslexia and Writers’ Forum; she was shortlisted in the Bath Short Story Prize in 2014, and came third in the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize 2018. The Downstairs Neighbor is her first novel. ABOUT THE DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOR: THE DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOR (Putnam, Feb 16th 2021) is a delicious blend of family drama meets domestic suspense as an entire three-flat Georgian home is a-rumble about the whereabouts of a missing seventeen-year-old girl. Cooper’s writing is tremendous and strong, while she presents a cast of characters: a mousy woman living alone (or presumably so) with a pet hamster, the ‘perfect’ Harlows, Steph and Paul (and their missing daughter, Freya), the driving instructor and his wife. It’s one house. …