Lionel Shriver

Bookended by two novellas, Property was a fairly tenuous link between all the stories, but as ever Shriver's writing was tight, wry and smart. Nothing escapes her notice as a writer, and with this collection she stays up there in my list of favourite writers.

My only disappointment was that the first novella is The Standing Chandelier, which I read as a standalone novel for my RLBC a few months ago. I hate doing rereads as time's too short, but I also hate partially reading books so I read it show more again despite myself and enjoyed it all over again.

The final novella was surprisingly based in Belfast (although I don't know why I was surprised as Shriver lived there for 12 years back in the Nineties), and as well as being an enjoyable (but slightly stressful) account of an unexpected flat share with a difficult flatmate, it was an interesting portrayal of Belfast seen through an outsider's eyes, an American who, like Shriver, had been living there for a decade. I'm not sure the Northern Ireland Tourist Board will be quoting from this novella in its advertising any time soon, but I think Shriver captured the city and its people pretty well, warts and all (and she certainly doesn't hold back on the criticism). She also doesn't shy away from looking her fellow Americans straight in the eye, calling out American sympathy for the IRA and Nationalism (the novella is set just after the Good Friday Agreement). I was curious about this, so I read up on a few interesting pieces online in which she talks about how her eyes were very much opened by her time in Belfast, changing her home politics away from liberalism as she was angry that murderers were being viewed through rose-tinted glasses.

Anyway, this is simply a review and not a political manifesto. The stories in between these two novellas were also very clever and amusing - I may be warming to the short story genre after all.

4 stars - dropping half a star for cheating me with a repeat of that separately published novella, but I remain in the Shriver fandom. show less

I love epistolary stories! And I love the somewhat pretentious prose of Lionel Shriver's books. This narrator is definitely not a fully likable person, and she does a lot of things that are arguably bad, but I feel that deep down she's trying to do the right thing. The part that always gets me is how she says when she got the call about the school shooting it didn't occur to her that Kevin might be the perpetrator. No matter how much she may have disliked him, she didn't think that badly of show more him.

On a personal note, I read this book when I was convinced I would never have children, and it was something to point to and say "see! that's what can happen!" But after my husband and I decided to adopt, I went back and read this book in one night to see if this book would make me feel differently about our decision, but it did not scare me the way it did before, which is good because I am now the mom of a beautiful daughter! show less

This is my third Lionel Shriver novel, and she's definitely becoming a favoured author of mine. In So Much For That, the novel opens with the male protagonist deciding to finally go ahead with his life's dream of escaping the rat race to live on a small island off the coast of Zanzibar, with or without his family. However (and this is no spoiler as the jacket tells you as much), his plans to live the dream are stopped dead in their tracks when his wife announces that she's had a serious show more cancer diagnosis.

The rest of the novel plays out predominantly around the impact that the terminal diagnosis has on his marriage, his family, their friendships and his own life plans. Such a topic could make for a very depressing read, but So Much For That is not so much focused on the sadness of the diagnosis but more on the emotional, practical and financial difficulties of caring for a partner whilst other life problems carry on regardless.

It throws out the window the stereotypes of terminal cancer patients somehow being super human and without flaws. Glynis (the wife who has cancer) was a difficult woman to deal with before the diagnosis, and as a patient is more difficult still. She's angry with the cancer, angry with family members who start to make appearances after long absences before the diagnosis, and rude with visitors whose visits she feels are to make themselves feel at peace once she's gone rather than being for her benefit. Doing the right thing is a very difficult line for Shep (the husband) to tread, and the strain of trying to keep the daily plates of life spinning whilst he cares for his wife is huge.

This is also a novel that heavily rails against the American health system (although granted this dates back to 2005 so I don't know how much things have progressed). Shep starts the novel with a tidy nest egg after selling his business, but the poor insurance plan provided by his new employer means that he has to cover vast excesses relating to the cancer treatment. Shriver (through this and another back story) is constantly poking at the sore of why those who have worked hard all their lives and paid their taxes should be penalised so heavily when it comes to needing health support, and the difficulties of trying to hold down a paying job when supporting a family member who's seriously unwell.

It raises some similar questions to those raised by Atul Gawande in his later non-fictional book Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End which was interesting, and is searingly honest in it's questioning of whether it's right to spend extortionate sums of money to extend a life under excruciating treatment for short-term gain.

In all, this is not a novel falling under misery lit. There's plenty of humour woven into the story, and I didn't find it a sad read despite the subject matter. Nothing escapes Shriver's eagle eye, such as familiar family stories where one sibling is left to bear the brunt of looking after an elderly parent.

It's not perfect - at 530 pages it probably took half of that before it become a page turner for me, but it's one of those novels where the second half is good enough to make allowances for that, and the ending is great.

4 stars - honest, brave and funny. show less

There are so many thoughtful reviews here already that I don't know whether I really have anything to add, but this book is haunting me and I just have to get some things down.

I like Eva. She reminds me of me, of the worst parts of me. She's not necessarily reliable, but she's honest with herself and with Franklin (her husband, to whom the book is written as a series of letters). She makes admissions about herself and about parenthood that we never speak out loud, but that I bet many of us show more think in our private moments. Yes, she is an unsympathetic narrator. But she's also an exquisitely well-characterized one.

Kevin as inscrutable sociopath is an easy and tempting way out, and Shriver gives us much more than that. In my reading, Kevin hates, loves, and admires his mother in equal measure because he sees how similar they really are, which she can't quite ever see (or perhaps won't admit to herself; maybe she's not so honest). To me, the fact that he spares her life is a mark of this. He won't kill her because he loves her; he spares her and ruins her life because he hates her; he finally lets her see some of his true self in prison because they reach a place where they start to recognize their similarities. I can't like Kevin, but I find him fascinating and frightening at the same time.

Shriver takes material that could have been tacky and exploitative and transmutes it into a thoughtful, occasionally satiric, brutal exploration of a deeply troubling subject. Kevin is clearly shown to have sociopathic tendencies, but kids are also just jerks sometimes. Parenthood is the greatest thing that happens to us breeders, except when it's not. I don't buy the Kevin-as-Bad-Seed interpretation; I also reject the Eva-as-Terrible-Mother fallback. The beauty of this novel is its ability to live in that grey zone. Terrifying and heart-rending, this was one of the best books I've read this year.

(Also, I highly recommend the movie. Ezra Miller's phenomenal performance as Kevin kept popping into my head as I read the book; Tilda and John C. Reilly are also, as always, great.) show less