"Neighbors is a short story written by Raymond Carver in 1988. It is from the collection of short stories "Short cuts".
The short story is in brief about the married couple Bill and Arlene Miller, who lives opposite the married couple Harriet and Jim stone. Bill and Arlene constantly see themselves in the light of the Stones' happy life. Bill is a bookkeeper and Arlene is a secretary, while Jim is a salesman for a machine-parts firm. In the story the Stones are going on a business trip combined with a family trip. Bill and Arlene are set to look after the Stones' apartment, feeding the cat, Kitty, and water their plants. In the Stones' absence Bill and Arlene show themselves from a side you normally don't experience from people that is to say the side that shows when you are alone with yourself with the minds curiosity. The story takes place over the course of 3 days. We have an objective third party storyteller and the entire story is written in the past with a few dialogs here and there. It is chronological and we don't experience any flashbacks or flashforwards. The language isn't advanced, the sentences aren't exactly long and there aren't any complicated words. That is probably due to the fact that the story takes place in an everyday life, in an everyday life environment and also in a very normal situation (it must be said to be normal to feed the cat and water the plants, when the neighbors are away). To sum up it is not a demanding text in terms of the length or the difficulty. We don't know where the story takes place or when it takes place. We don't even know how old our main characters are. Is it even necessary? Raymond Carver gets in stories a hold on themes like alcoholism, poverty, divorce and misfortune that could be taking place anywhere in the world (although people from the west relate more to his stories).
We have a short precise presentation of the two people Bill and Arlene, but they could for that matter had been anybody.