The 3 best books by Lionel Shriver

It sometimes happens that the journalist comes to the narrative from a kind of strapolation of his craft. In the case of Lionel shriver There was also that unsuspected transition that in the first instance points to a dump of chronic literary creativity until the corsets are unleashed and the writer ends up being born without other conditions.

In the evolution of Shriver all are good works. Because in the end the matter of its transition describes a variety of arguments and forms, different slopes towards a bibliography in suggestive meanders. As a common background a sociological interest faced already as a total novelist or via stories.

I've never been much of that kind of novel intimate in which the common thread is a closed universe of its protagonists. The magic in the case of this author is precisely the interest in vital confluences, in synergies from the most casual crossroads of destiny.

But in an already extensive bibliography we find many other narrative concerns around the family as the center where societies are formed, societies in which individuals seek their fit precisely from what they have experienced in their most intimate environments, a fascinating clash that always leads to great stories. of searching for oneself, uprooting and guilt.

Top 3 best books by Lionel Shriver

The Mandible. A family: 2029-2047

It could not be otherwise. Everything that points to dystopian sci-fi It beats me from the start compared to any other novel. And although this is not the best of the prospective novels of the future that I know, it is fully satisfactory to recommend it in the first place of this author.

The dystopian always ends up serving as an excuse for each writer to present their doubts and fears about the future, in that impossible balance between the ambition of the human being, the lack of control of the free market and our world of finite resources.

But a dystopia can also serve to focus on the consequences at all levels, even seen from within a family structure, one of those famous cells about to be assaulted by the worst of today's viruses, economic crises.

United States, 2029. A century later, it has happened again. The dollar is plummeting, inflation is skyrocketing, the country is heading for bankruptcy.

And the Mandible family, the protagonist of this sagacious and fierce dystopian novel that, taking us to the future, tells us about very recognizable realities, is going to suffer the consequences.

Prosperous and sophisticated, yet dysfunctional, the Mandibles await the inheritance of the nonagenarian patriarch. But since he died in the middle of the crisis, the rain of millions that had children and grandchildren dissipates into the air. And the members of this upper-class family are involved in situations that are unheard of for them: Carter, unable to afford the payment of the residence of his senile stepmother, is forced to take her into his home; Avery is outraged that he can no longer afford to buy olive oil; her sister Florence has to house homeless relatives in her small apartment; Nollie, a writer who has lived happily as an expatriate in Paris, has no choice but to return to a country that is unrecognizable to her ... Only the younger generation, represented by the adolescent Willing, a freak and self-taught economist, is capable of looking for ways out imaginative to the crisis.

Lionel Shriver, with his twisted tusk and bad trademark drool, skillfully moves characters overwhelmed by the situation, whom he portrays with penetrating gazes and savage humor. And it presents us with a United States in which the American dream shows its darker side: border fences no longer serve to prevent immigrants from entering, but to prevent citizens from escaping; some state declares its independence; the president with a Latin name decides to create a new currency to replace the crumbling dollar ...

The Mandible. A family: 2029-2047

We need to talk about Kevin

Life has a strange inertia when the children are already having at an advanced age. Because nature rules, the instinct of youth serves the cause of training between individuals more than tutorials and therapeutic teachings. Hence, sometimes whatever happens or at least does not happen as intended, without collateral damage or minimal extortion.

Eva is a woman satisfied with herself. She is the author and editor of travel guides for people as urban and happy as her. Married for years to Franklin, she decides, in her late thirties, to have a child. And the product of such an indecisive decision will be Kevin. But, almost from the start, nothing resembles the ineffable family myths of the happy, urban middle class.

And when he is born, Kevin is the typical difficult baby who tortures parents. And, in time, he will become the terror of babysitters, a terrible teenager, the anti-hero who cares nothing but the beauty of pure evil. And on that journey that goes from Eva's first disappointments to young Kevin's bloody epiphany, two days before he turns sixteen, the boy is an enigma for his mother, who has never been able to love him.

We need to talk about Kevin

Private property

The private, that dark object of desire. Windows with light seen in the distance, through which figures can be seen moving in that intimacy yearned for by neighbors or by complete strangers. Because to contemplate each one in their most particular habitat, is to access the recesses of their soul.

Nothing better than the story to see cuts of those other lives focused and undertaken by each one from the most eccentric of motivations, those that start from an internal forum where walls, dreams and wounds coexist.

A very personal wedding gift becomes a source of disputes; a tree faces two neighbors, who will be swept away by a growing hostility; a thirty-year-old is reluctant to leave the family home; a postman spies on the letters he delivers; an aid worker in Kenya lives an unexpected adventure; a father and son find themselves in a difficult situation at an airport; a couple gets into a brawl over the purchase of a house; a fugitive from justice is fed up with the paradise in which he has hidden; two foreign women meet in Belfast in the heat of conflict ...

The diverse characters that populate the stories of Lionel Shriver live tense situations caused by fixation on property. For the effort to own real estate, objects or people. As is customary for the author, everyday situations can spill over at any time, and apparently more sane people are perfectly capable of losing their roles to unsuspected limits.

A range of couples, parents and children, neighbors and families are subjected to a roller coaster of deceptions, obsessions, fears, desires and misunderstandings. With his usual sagacity - and sharp stiletto - Shriver scrutinizes and radiographs contemporary society in these tales that can be at the same time bleak and bizarre, hurtful and poetic, virulent and profound. In the brevity of the story, the author does not lose an iota of her mordant: she condenses it into an irresistible elixir.

Private property

Other Recommended Lionel Shriver Books…

The movement of the body through space

Being still is the closest thing to being dead. Only a faint breath and the suspended heartbeat differentiate one state from another. The movement is the manifestation, the intention of life as an impossible race towards immortality. As the first appearance of such an impossible mission... to achieve the ideal physique, the canons that sculpt a figure with a hieratic gesture that, in the end, ends up being a still photo, a simple appearance of what the next moment is no longer.

Allergic to all kinds of group activities, Serenata Terpsichore, the protagonist of this novel, is a voice-over artist who has dedicated her life to exercising, running, swimming, and bicycling. Now, when she turns sixty, so much of her activity takes a painful toll on her in the form of osteoarthritis. For her part, Remington Alabaster, her always sedentary husband, has just been forcibly retired from the Albany Department of Transportation after a confusing confrontation with his new boss, and decides to choose precisely that moment to discover the benefits of gymnastics and run a marathon.

After joining the fitness fever that is increasingly present in the modern world, the once moderate Remington becomes an insufferable narcissist, and hires a strict (and seductive) personal trainer, with whom he will participate in competitions every time. most demanding: after the marathon, half a Mettleman, the full triathlon... As furious as she is concerned, Serenata will discover that the tenacity of an early retiree with a lot of free time who insists on defying age should not be underestimated.

Astute and penetrating, in The movement of the body through space, Lionel Shriver's acidity has a new objective: the cult of physical fitness, the excessive dedication to exercise, which serves as a vantage point from which to observe trends, failures and manias of American society today, with its cultural and racial tensions. A fierce and explosive novel, full of hot topics (the troubles of aging, masculinity in crisis, tensions in the couple, political correctness), whose extremely sharp gaze does not evade a polemic, nor does it leave a myth undismantled.

The movement of the body through space
rate post

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.