America's another country: they do things differently there

Just been reviewed on an American blog devoted to books (it included an excellent plot summary by the way -  not simply a re-arrangement of the blurb on the back cover.) One point that came across, however, was how 'other' A Good Confession felt to an American reader.

Whenever I read British literature, I find myself transported. It seems so foreign to me, even more so than reading the South Asian authors and Middle Eastern authors who I love, perhaps because I always feel like it should feel more similar to my own experience, since they speak the same language. So I’m surprised when I read a story just how different it is.

Click on the title of this post if you want to read the review in full.
I suspect that on this side of the Atlantic we do assume we know America because we're so immersed in American culture through music, film, television and literature. When my sons went to New York for the first time (mid 90s)  aged 6 and 10, they were enchanted by a city they already knew as well as London. Turn the corner into the Rockefeller Centre and yes, that's where Macaulay Culkin was reunited with his Mom in Home Alone, another corner and another cherished film moment - and they weren't even teenagers...

It's an assumption we can't trust though.  I give you my uncle's front door. He lives with his large, loving family in Chicago. A few more blocks and he would be officially in the suburbs but his house is within city limits.  It's a pretty standard American house with a small backyard and and even smaller strip of grass dividing his front porch from the pavement. A couple of years ago he bought a new front door. He didn't order it specially and like his house it is pretty standard.  And it comes with a standard feature - a latch. That was good he said because they were so many of them coming in and out all the time it was a nuisance to have keep getting your key out and unlocking the door. So, during daylight hours it was on the latch. Anyone could just come in and they only locked up when it got dark...

I can't imagine anyone doing that in England, not in the cities or in the countryside. Half a century or more ago front doors might have been left unlocked but no more. And nowhere in the UK can you buy a standard, mass produced front door with a latch....so another of my assumptions was folded up and put away...