Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Shriver, L. 2007 | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
"Complex and nervy, Shriver's clever meditation will intrigue anyone who has ever wondered how things might have turned out had they followed, or ignored, a life-changing impulse." -- People (Critic's Choice)
This dazzling novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin takes a psychological and deeply human look at love and volition
Does the course of life hinge on a single kiss? Whether the American expatriate Irena McGovern does or doesn't lean into a certain pair of lips in London will determine whether she stays with her smart, disciplined, intellectual American partner Lawrence, or runs off with Ramsey--a wild, exuberant British snooker star the couple has known for years. Employing a parallel-universe structure, Shriver follows Irena's life as it unfolds under the influence of two drastically different men.
In a tour de force that, remarkably, has no villains, Shriver explores the implications, both large and small, of our choice of mate--a subject of timeless, universal fascination for both sexes.
Author Notes
Lionel Shriver was born Margaret Ann Shriver on May 18, 1957 in Gastonia, North Carolina. She changed her first name because of her preference for it. She was educated at Barnard College, and Columbia University (BA, MFA). She has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok and Belfast, and currently lives in London. Shriver wrote seven novels and published six (one novel could not find a publisher) before writing We Need to Talk About Kevin, which she called her "make or break" novel. She won the 2005 Orange Prize for her eighth published novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, a thriller and close study of maternal ambivalence, and the role it might have played in the title character's decision to murder nine people at his high school. The book created a lot of controversy, and achieved success through word of mouth. The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 was published in May 2016.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The smallest details of staid coupledom duel it out with a lusty alternate reality that begins when a woman passes up an opportunity to cheat on her longtime boyfriend in Shriver's latest (after the Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin). Irina McGovern, a children's book illustrator in London, lives in comfortable familiarity with husband-in-everything-but-marriage-certificate Lawrence Trainer, and every summer the two have dinner with their friend, the professional snooker player Ramsey Acton, to celebrate Ramsey's birthday. One year, following Ramsey's divorce and while terrorism specialist "think tank wonk" Lawrence is in Sarajevo on business, Irina and Ramsey have dinner, and after cocktails and a spot of hash, Irina is tempted to kiss Ramsey. From this near-smooch, Shriver leads readers on a two-pronged narrative: one consisting of what Irina imagines would have happened if she had given in to temptation, the other showing Irina staying with Lawrence while fantasizing about Ramsey. With Jamesian patience, Shriver explores snooker tournaments and terrorism conferences, passionate lovemaking and passionless sex, and teases out her themes of ambition, self-recrimination and longing. The result is an impressive if exhausting novel. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A layered and unflinching portrait of infidelity--with a narrative appropriately split in two. In the opening chapter, Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin, 2003, etc.) introduces three people suffering mid-life crises in late-1990s London: Irena, a children's book illustrator; her longtime romantic partner, Lawrence, a researcher at a political think tank; and Ramsey, a wealthy snooker pro who's recently divorced Jude, Irena's former professional partner. The four used to celebrate Ramsey's birthday together, but Lawrence is traveling and Jude is out of the picture, leaving Irena and Ramsey to while away an evening together. A polite dinner soon drifts into heavy flirting, and from there the story breaks into two narratives with alternating chapters: In one, Irena pursues an affair with Ramsey and leaves Lawrence; in the other, she restrains herself and stays loyal. Each choice has its downside. Ramsey, despite his outwardly suave demeanor, proves to be a childish lout who's prone to jealousy, drinks heavily and is tormented about his failure to win the national snooker championship; the sex is great (and crucial for keeping the peace), but his demands on Irena's time and emotions threaten her professional and family relationships. Life with Lawrence is more stable, but she's dogged by an urge to break away from humdrum domestic rhythms and increasingly suspicious of Lawrence's behavior. Shriver pulls off a tremendous feat of characterization: Following Irena across 500-plus pages and two timelines offers remarkable insight into her work habits, her thought processes, the way she argues with friends and family, the small incidents of everyday life that make her feel either trapped or free. Better yet, the author is more interested in raising questions about love and fidelity than in pat moralizing. Readers will wonder which choice was best for Irena, but Shriver masterfully confounds any attempt to arrive at a sure answer. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Shriver's eighth novel will attract patient readers ready for the next step after chick lit. With dual parallel narratives, Shriver offers two paths for his protagonist, Irina, to tread: stay with her dull but stable boyfriend or run off with the exciting but volatile public figure she's only known in passing and for whom she suddenly lusts. The story lines split at a cinematic-style moment when Irina feels the urge to kiss this new love interest. In one version of the story, she kisses him, and in another, she resists temptation. Both story lines unfold predictably, but what will hook the reader is watching each run its respective course. In each version of her life, she makes choices with excruciating slowness. Her naivete notwithstanding, something about the narrative arc keeps the reader rooting for her. The addition of subplots--her relationship with her demanding and uncompromising mother, the drama of the world of British championship snooker, the unavoidable nature of international terrorism--contribute depth. This novel is ostensibly formulaic, but the details and the solid writing make it ultimately enjoyable. --Debi Lewis Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was brother to Dorothy, who adored Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was married to Sara, who was the sister-in-law of the future poet laureate Robert Southey. Together with a second Sara, with whom Coleridge was besotted, the Wordsworths established a fluid commune in the Lake District. An earlier grouping in the south of England had attracted a government spy looking for traitorous plotters, and rumors among the locals of sexual shenanigans. Coleridge was addicted to opium (in the liquid form of the medical remedy laudanum) and, when not overwhelmingly talkative, was self-destructively indolent. He wrote for money, while Wordsworth sought to reconcile nature with individual consciousness. Like a later generation of literary bohemians, the pair made epic cross-country expeditions, recorded in poems with titles like "Stepping Westward" and "I Travell'd Among Unknown Men." Adam Sisman has made the bond between Wordsworth and Coleridge the centerpiece of "The Friendship," a colorful history that also functions as an enjoyable group biography. The two poets collaborated on several projects, like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," mostly the work of Coleridge; and "Lyrical Ballads," an attempt, largely Wordsworth's, to turn away from "elaborate and swelling language." From the outset, they envisaged a great poem that, as later balladeers might put it, was going to change the world: "Coleridge would be the brain, Wordsworth the hands. An excited Coleridge imagined a poem greater than any yet written, greater even than 'Paradise Lost' - indeed the poem itself would show the way to man's redemption." "The Recluse," as it was to be known, remained unfinished at the time of Wordsworth's death in 1850 (Coleridge had died 16 years before). Like other successful duos, Wordsworth and Coleridge were temperamentally dissimilar. Wordsworth, reserved and thoughtful, wrote verse while plodding to and fro in the garden and, we are told, was subject to stomach trouble when revising. Coleridge was irresponsible and debt-ridden, but everywhere spoken of as a genius, if a volatile one. "I think too much for a Poet," he said. His addiction to opium began early and was never conquered. In time, it became his only regular habit. In 1807, he accepted an invitation to give a course of lectures on poetry at the Royal Institution and moved to London, taking "some noisy rooms in the Strand" above a newspaper office. "Here, stupefied with opium," Sisman writes, "he was often unable to rise from his bed to give the lectures at the appointed hour of 2 o'clock. De Quincey described the reaction of fashionable ladies arriving outside the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street in their carriages, only to find a lecture canceled because 'Mr. Coleridge had been taken ill.'" Southey seconded Dorothy Wordsworth's observation that by this time the once mercurial Coleridge did "nothing but read," adding that he had accumulated "knowledge equal to that of any man living." Far from admiring this achievement, Southey lamented that Coleridge's "body of sound philosophy" would "perish with him." This is harsh, considering he produced enduring poems, journals and criticism. But it is perhaps true to say that he belongs to that curious class of writers remembered for conversation. William Wordsworth, at left, in an engraved portrait. Right: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as painted by James Northcote. "The Friendship" takes more than 150 pages to get to the friendship. Sisman, the author of an earlier biography of James Boswell, sets up the story with a vivid description of Wordsworth's excitement at the French Revolution, which he witnessed firsthand and hoped would spread to Britain. His vision, "That if France prospered good men would not long / Pay fruitless worship to humanity," has acquired a sinister nuance in the centuries since. While first believing that nothing must stand in the path of "Liberty," Wordsworth later felt that the severed heads rolling across the Place de la Concorde did, after all, get in the way. His reconciliation to monarchism was perfected in 1843 when he succeeded Southey as poet laureate to Queen Victoria. The young Coleridge was equally radical in politics, at a time when sedition, real or imagined, was punishable by imprisonment, transportation to Australia or death. The range of his outrage, like that of his table talk, was wide: from the slave trade to the "recently introduced hair-powder tax" (you paid a guinea for the privilege). He and Southey promoted the principles of "Pantisocracy," a Utopian philosophy that included "republicanism and philanthropy, notions of pastoral simplicity" and greater equality of the sexes. Recognizing the impossibility of attaining their ideals in England, they planned to settle in America, "on the Susquehanna ... because, as Coleridge later said, he liked the name." It is always easier to make dissension and war more engaging to a reader than friendship and peace, so it is not surprising that Sisman's book is most alive at the beginning and at the end, when the two eminences are first young and fierce, then quarreling over literary and personal matters. The Wordsworths never could approve of Coleridge's neglect of his wife to pursue Sara Hutchinson (whose sister Mary became Mrs. William Wordsworth), even though they had little fondness for Sara Coleridge. The story of how she cared for their dying son Berkeley while Coleridge was in Germany, then was reduced to borrowing money, all the time urged by a friend "not to distract her husband from his studies by telling him of Berkeley's death," takes the modern breath away. Mindful that the lives of Wordsworth, Coleridge and their circle are much written about, Sisman has proceeded mainly from primary sources: letters, journals, written anecdotes and the poems themselves. This is admirable, but the book seems in places stiff when it ought to be unbuttoned, the characters muffled when we hope to hear them clearly. At dinner one evening in 1798, the youthful Hazlitt spoke up in favor of Edmund Burke, whom Coleridge had been disparaging, to say that "speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a vulgar, democratical mind." And when Coleridge gave up a Unitarian ministry to live on patronage, Wordsworth "remarked" that he hoped "the fruit will be good as the seed is noble." They probably didn't sound like that in real life. Sisman mentions the "succession of guidebooks" to regions of Britain that appeared at about the time they embarked on their astounding walks, but little of what these books contained, or of the footwear and maps used by the walkers. BY 1808, when Coleridge was 36 and Wordsworth two years older, the poets were drifting apart. In addition to being a dope addict, Coleridge was "a rotten drunkard," and felt he had squandered his gifts. Wordsworth married Mary and had several children, but he never abandoned his sister. He and Dorothy were regarded by Southey as "of all human beings whom I have ever known the most intensely selfish." Sisman reports that "they had been known to lie on the ground and imagine their bodies lying next to each other in their graves." When, after much wavering, William tied the knot, he insisted that Dorothy spend the night before the ceremony "with Mary's ring on her finger." (She did not attend the wedding.) "The Friendship" is fascinating, and might have been even more so if the author's prose had the zip of that of, say, Richard Holmes, who has covered the lives of both poets in his own Coleridge biography and other books. Sisman succeeds in the difficult tasks of making friendship dramatic and the publication of poetry seem eventful, but I closed his book with just a faint impression of having been in the company of the gentle god and his companionable devil. As he got older, Wordsworth grew more conservative; Coleridge never overcame his opium addiction. James Campbell is an editor of The Times Literary Supplement in London. His new book is "Through the Grapevine: Essays and Portraits."
Library Journal Review
Expatriates in London, children's book illustrator Irena McGovern and longtime partner Lawrence, a head-in-the-clouds sort who works at a think tank, are quietly content with their routine lives. Then, when Lawrence is away on business, Irena is saddled with the responsibility of taking out an old friend for his birthday. The ex-husband of an author Irena has worked with, Ramsey Acton is unpredictable, electric, slightly uncouth-and one of England's best-known snooker players. To Irena's surprise, she feels an urgent attraction to Ramsey on their evening out and is stuck with the inevitable question: should she or shouldn't she? In real life, we can never have it both ways, but in this original and involving work, Orange Prize winner Shriver (We Need To Talk About Kevin) gets to indulge. In alternating chapters, she details what happens when Irena takes the erotic plunge with Ramsey and then what happens when she doesn't. The technique works surprisingly well. Sometimes one story is more engaging than the other, but the two versions are seamlessly knit, and in the end both are convincing and beautifully told. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/06.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.