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The inspiration for the film starring Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly, this resonant story of a mother’s unsettling quest to understand her teenage son’s deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them remains terrifyingly prescient. Eva never really wanted to be a mother. And certainly not the mother of a boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much–adored teacher in a school shooting two days before his sixteenth birthday. Neither nature nor nurture exclusively shapes a child's character. But Eva was always uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood. Did her internalized dislik...
Following the death of her worthy liberal parents, Corlis McCrea moves back into her family's grand Reconstruction mansion in North Carolina, willed to all three siblings. Her timid younger brother has never left home. When her bullying black-sheep older brother moves into 'his' house as well, it's war.
In Lionel Shriver’s entertaining send-up of today’s cult of exercise—which not only encourages better health, but now like all religions also seems to promise meaning, social superiority, and eternal life—an aging husband’s sudden obsession with extreme sport makes him unbearable. After an ignominious early retirement, Remington announces to his wife Serenata that he’s decided to run a marathon. This from a sedentary man in his sixties who’s never done a lick of exercise in his life. His wife can’t help but observe that his ambition is “hopelessly trite.” A loner, Serenata disdains mass group activities of any sort. Besides, his timing is cruel. Serenata has long been the...
Set against the vivid backdrop of modern-day Africa—a continent now primarily populated with wildlife of the two-legged sort—Lionel Shriver's Game Control is a wry, grimly comic tale of bad ideas and good intentions. Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition. With a deft, droll touch, Shriver highlights the hypocrisy of lofty intellectuals who would "save" humanity but who don't like people.
An extraordinary novel from the Orange Prize winning author of ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’.
From the Orange Prize-winning author of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN comes the new novel everyone will be talking about. It all hinges on one kiss. Whether Irina McGovern does or does not lean in to a particular pair of lips in London will determine whether she stays with the disciplined intellectual Lawrence, her partner of nearly ten years, or runs off with Ramsey, a hard-living snooker player. Shriver's playful parallel-universe structure allows Irina's departing futures to unfold side-by-side under the influence of two drastically different men. Where Lawrence is supportive if repressed, Ramsey is volatile and spontaneous. these many contrasts have ramifications for Irina's relationships with friends and family, for her career as an illustrator and, most importantly, for the texture of her daily life.For Shriver, love is about trade-offs. Both men in Irina's dual destinies are worthy of her affection but - like real people - marred by severe shortcomings. Yet often the very allure of our mates is what is wrong with them, a truth conveyed with all the subtlety, perceptiveness and drama that made WE NEED tO tALK ABOUt KEVIN an international bestseller.
With dry wit and psychological acuity, this near-future novel explores the aftershocks of an economically devastating U.S. sovereign debt default on four generations of a once-prosperous American family. Down-to-earth and perfectly realistic in scale, this is not an over-the-top Blade Runner tale. It is not science fiction. In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war that will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Overnight, on the international currency exchange, the “almighty dollar” plummets in value, to be replaced by a new global currency, the “bancor.” In retaliation, the president declares that America will default on its loans. “Deadbeat ...
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The first ever story collection from the inimitable Lionel Shriver ‘Genius’ Stylist ‘Phenomenal’ Observer ‘Brilliant’ The Times
’A brutal treat’ Daily Mail Includes an exclusive first look at Lionel Shriver's new novel, THE MOTION OF THE BODY THROUGH SPACE From the award-winning novelist and short story writer, Lionel Shriver, comes a literary gem, a story about love and the power of a gift.