reviewed by Wendy Tucker

by Lionel Shriver

I’ve been a fan of Lionel Shriver since the best-selling, prizewinning novel that made her name, We need to talk about Kevin, appeared in 2003.

Any woman who at 15 changes her name from Margaret Ann to Lionel and sticks with it, has got to be fierce. And fierce she is. We need to talk about Kevin examined maternal ambivalence and a high school shooting. The post birthday world (2007), explores the fractures in relationships. So much for that (2010) is a bitter, ironic indictment of the American health system.

Then The Mandibles (2017) that was set in the near future and follows a New York family living through the total and irreversible collapse of the world’s financial system. This was again a best seller but Shriver was accused of cultural appropriation because one of the main characters was an African-American woman and Shriver is not. This began an ongoing literary debate about who can write about whom with a very outspoken Shriver at its centre. I loved and admired all the above best sellers but, after the intense arguments, Shriver’s work and popularity seemed to decline and I gave up reading her.

I was pleased to hear that she was back in form with a new novel published this year and surprise, surprise it’s about political correctness.

In an alternative recent past ‘the last great civil rights fight’ takes place and the Western World slowly disintegrates under the rule of the ‘Mental Parity’ movement. There is no such thing as stupidity, or any of its synonyms, only ‘alternative processing’. Anything that appears to be ‘brain vain’ is cancelled and the best qualifications are no qualifications. There are no exams, doctors don’t need to attend medical school, the chemists at Pfizer are not qualified and the COVID vaccine kills millions. Our first-person protagonist, Pearson Coverse, resists in any way she can, and Mania is her diary. Her children are taken into care, her husband is injured and receives poor medical treatment, both are jobless and then homeless. It’s funny, it’s frightening and it’s relatable satire. But it’s carried too far and becomes slightly absurd.

Shiver has taken a sledgehammer when she needed a whittling knife.

But I’m glad she’s still angry.