Showing results by author "Lionel Shriver" in All Categories

Determined to die with dignity, Kay and her husband, Cyril - both healthy and vital medical professionals in their early 50s - make a pact: to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned 80. A lot can change in 30 years, however....

Allergic to group activities of any kind, all her life Serenata has run, swum and cycled on her lonesome. But now that she's hit 60, all that physical activity has destroyed her knees. As she contemplates surgery with dread, her previously sedentary husband, Remington, recently and ignominiously redundant, chooses this precise moment to discover exercise. Which should be good for his health, right? Yet as he joins the cult of fitness that seems increasingly to consume the whole of the Western world, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist.

Checker Secretti is the most gifted and original drummer that the club-goers of Astoria, Queens, have ever heard. When he plays, conundrums seem to solve themselves, brilliant thoughts spring to mind, and couples fall in love. The members of his band, The Derailleurs, are passionately devoted to their guiding spirit, as are all who fall under Checker's spell. But when another drummer, Eaton Striker, hears the prodigy play, he is pulled inexorably into Checker's orbit by a powerful combination of envy and admiration.

Qu'est-ce qui peut conduire un jeune garçon privilégié au pire ?À la veille de ses 16 ans, Kevin pénètre dans l'enceinte de son lycée et abat neuf personnes. Sa mère, Eva, revient sur l'enfance de son fils, ce qu'elle a fait, mal fait, pas fait... Dans une série de lettres, Eva s'interroge. Quel est ce Mal qui ronge l'Amérique ? Et eux, ses parents ? Quelle responsabilité portent-ils ? Il n'est jamais trop tard pour parler de Kevin.

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.

Novelist, cultural observer and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces ‘under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous’ points of view, she regularly deplores the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken society. Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator and Guardian, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal.

For 10 years Estrin Lancaster has fled Philadelphia. From the Philippines to Berlin, she's been a traveler without a destination, an expatriate without a motherland. In each of the cities Estrin favors, she manages an apartment, a job, and a lover and never tarries past the first signs of ennui.

Há anos um grupo separatista da região de Barba, em Portugal, explode bombas ao redor do mundo como estratégia para conseguir a sua independência. A comunidade internacional vive aterrorizada com os atentados implacáveis e imprevisíveis e a autodeterminação de Barba é um dos temas centrais e mais quentes da política mundial. A capital, Cinzeiro, abriga jornalistas de toda parte, entre eles o recém-chegado Edgar Kellogg–advogado bem-sucedido que trocou a carreira em Nova York pelo entusiasmo e a imprevisibilidade do jornalismo.

World-famous anthropologist Gray Kaiser has almost everything. She is brilliance, self-sufficient, and beautiful. But at 59, one thing is still missing from her life. She has never been in love. Her assistant Errol McEchern has loved her for many years, but she doesn't know.

When Pandora picks up her older brother, Edison, at her local Iowa airport, she literally doesn’t recognize him. The once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds. What happened? Soon Edison’s slovenly habits, appalling diet, and know-it-all monologues are driving Pandora and her fitness-freak husband Fletcher insane. After the brother-in-law has more than overstayed his welcome, Fletcher delivers his wife an ultimatum: It’s him or me. Rich with Shriver’s distinctive wit and ferocious energy, Big Brother is about fat: why we overeat and whether extreme diets ever really work.

The five titles shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2013, administered in partnership with BookTrust. Contains: Mrs Fox by Sarah Hall read by Andrea Riseborough, Barmouth by Lisa Blower read by Rebekah Staton, Prepositions by Lionel Shriver read by Nancy Crane, Notes from the House of Spirits by Lucy Wood read by Hattie Morahan, We Are Watching Something Terrible Happening by Lavinia Greenlaw read by Claire Skinner.

The extraordinary new novel from the Orange Prize winning author of ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’.What do you pack for the rest of your life?Shepherd Knacker is bored with his humdrum existence. He's sold his successful handy-man business for a million dollars and is now ready to embark on his 'Afterlife' - a one way ticket to a small island off the coast of Africa. He tries to convince his wife Glynis to come with him, but she laughs off the idea as preposterous.

Still unattached and childless at 59, world-renowned anthropologist Gray Kaiser is seemingly invincible - and untouchable. Returning to make a documentary at the site of her first great triumph in Kenya, she is accompanied by her faithful middle-aged assistant, Errol McEchern, who has loved her for years in silence. When young graduate assistant Raphael Sarasola arrives on the scene, Gray is captivated and falls hopelessly in love - before an amazed Errol's eyes.

It all hinges on one kiss. Whether Irina McGovern does or does not lean in to a specific pair of lips in London will determine whether she stays with her disciplined, intellectual partner Lawrence or runs off with Ramsey, a hard-living snooker player. Using a parallel universe structure, we follow Irina's life as it unfolds under the influence of two drastically different men.

Avec une plume plus incisive que jamais et un humour ravageur, Lionel Shriver livre un roman explosif sur un couple de sexagénaires en crise, dressant au passage un portrait mordant de nos sociétés obsédées par la santé et le culte du corps. Un beau matin, au petit-déjeuner, Remington fait une annonce tonitruante à son épouse Serenata : cette année, il courra un marathon. Tiens donc ?

After having escaped for years to London, Corlis McCrea returns to the grand Reconstruction mansion where she grew up in North Carolina, now willed to the three grown children following the death of their parents. All three want the house. Fiscal necessity dictates that two must buy a third out. Just as she was torn as a girl, the sister must choose between her decent younger brother and the renegade eldest - the black sheep who covets his legacy in order to destroy it.

'Love me, love my game,' says professional tennis player Willy Novinsky at 23. Tennis has been Willy's one love - until she meets the uncannily confident Eric Oberdorf. Low-ranked but untested, Eric, too, aims to make his mark on the international tennis circuit. They marry. But their life together soon grows poisoned by full-tilt competition over which spouse can rise to the top first. Willy discovers that her perfect partner may also prove her most devastating opponent.

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.

He has that thing that they'd all pay for but can't buy: onstage and off, the 19-year-old rock drummer Checker Secretti is electric. When he plays with his band, The Derailleurs, the natives of Astoria, Queens, clamour for a piece of him. But charisma comes at a price. A Salieri to Checker's Mozart, the fiercely envious fellow drummer Eaton Striker is eager to sow discord among the Derailleurs, that he might replace the exasperatingly popular goody-goody in the close-knit neighbourhood's affections.

From the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin comes a bold and savage story of the intersection of politics and human relationships, set in turbulent Northern Ireland. Having abandoned Philadelphia for the life of an international nomad, Estrin Lancaster has a taste for hot spots. She now finds herself in Belfast, a city scarred by twenty years of ritualised violence. As the former purveyor of his own bomb-disposal service, Farrell O'Phelan courts the company of destruction.