After a period when the suburbs seemed to have disappeared from American novels, they seem to be coming back, reimagined by a new generation of writers. The books “suggest that there are important stories still to be found in the land of the split-level and the McMansion, the land where many pollsters, as it happens, believe the next election will be won or lost. These novels and others like them may even tell us a few things the pollsters cannot. They’re also a reminder that the American vision of suburbia has been created by novels and stories at least as much as it has been described by them. The suburbs aren’t just a place anymore; they’re a state of mind.”