Mania

A Novel

De: Lionel Shriver

Narrado por: Abby Craden

Duración: 9 h y 22 m

Resumen del Editor

""A fantasy that hews uncomfortably close to today’s reality, where facts and the truth are selectively recognized at increasingly subjective whims . . . . The specifics of Mania are the stuff of bleeding satire, but the novel’s guiding concept cuts close to the bone with no anesthesia. Shriver isn’t one to tip-toe around her subjects. She still knows how to poke the bear. In this case, the bear is us.” — Boston Globe

Set in a parallel yet all too familiar near past, a brilliant subversive novel about a lifelong friendship threatened by culture wars, from the New York Times bestselling author.

In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is ""the last great civil rights fight."" Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word (“stupid”) and encouraged to report parents who use it at home.

A college English instructor, the constitutionally rebellious Pearson Converse rejected her restrictive Jehovah’s Witness upbringing as a teenager, and so has an aversion to dogma of any kind. Made impotent in the university classroom, she’s also enraged by the crushing of her exceptionally bright children’s spirits in primary school. Fortunately, she enjoys the confidence of a best friend, a media commentator with whom she can speak frankly about her socially unacceptable contempt for the MP movement. Or at least she thinks she can . . . until one day the political chasm between the two women becomes uncrossable, and a lifelong relationship implodes.

With echoes of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, told in Lionel Shriver’s inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.

©2024 Lionel Shriver (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

A must read

Mania is a fantastic book that is relevant to current events. Like academia, this book pushes ideas and theories to the extreme, but that’s what makes it so important in today’s world. It's also sharp and witty, with a huge dollop of humor.

Fiction for non-fiction lovers

Going back and forth between listening to this book and listening to news and podcasts about the real world, I often confused one for the other. I love her clear avoidance of politics because the message is louder for it. I’m just buzzing right now… and a bit frightened.

Thoroughly enjoyed this

Shriver envisions a world created by Ellsworth Monkton Toohey and it’s every bit as incompetent and frightening as one could imagine.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

A parable of our times wherein the power hungry will advance any cause as long as it satisfies the authoritarian impulse and the masses will eagerly participate if it makes them feel good.

Are We There Yet?

Ms. Shriver piles nonsense upon nonsense to provide a terrifying yet mesmerizing mirror to the "real" world. This book is every bit as frightening as "1984" but a lot funnier. Funny, yes, but it is very nervous laughter.

This is 2024

Loved this book, feels like we already live in it. Don’t agree with all of shriver’s assertions but very witty and extremely clever.

Lionel Shriver is back doing what she does best!

I highly recommend this refreshingly entertaining and thought-provoking listen...especially if you enjoyed Shriver’s earlier dystopian work, "The Mandibles.”

One of Fifty Ways Society Could Have Gone Crazy

We've had our hysterias in recent years. I'll leave the list to you, but let's just say people have unfriended each other for numerous issues in recent times. Well, Ms. Shriver imagines a way that we *could* have lost our minds, but didn't. This underscores how arbitrary our national policy obsessions are, as we lurch from one good person/bad person signifier nobody ever thought of before to another with equal single-minded intensity.

She also deftly illustrates how a certain kind of cheerleader for a cause -- and media darling -- would have been the cheerleader for the opposite cause if only the latter were in vogue instead. The same point occurred after I watched a news anchor's contentious interview with Bill O'Rielly about Bill's treatment of women at Fox during the #MeToo frenzy. I believe the word "harassment" was used. Expressions of disgust were employed. The anchor's name? Matt Lauer.

Great story if you are willing to be open to it

Not at all what I expected great stuff for regardless of what your political spectrum is. Even if some of the ideas don’t align with you is fictionalized version of America is something you need to listen to to know what we society of for good or bad.

a brilliant and timely novel

Cutting, insightful social commentary paralleling the manias of our day, And yet it manages to do more than just that; this is an insight into our best and worst traits though an exaggerating and absurdist lens.

a well narrated, gripping story