Review:
Separating Fat from Fiction A novel takes on the social issue du jour
BY SARAH COURTEAU
We’re sitting on one of the biggest health epidemics of modern times, quite literally. Researchers recently identified the troubling creep of “desk derriere”— fat, flat butts whose size and shape are the product of too many hours spent planted on our behinds—a malady anatomically specific enough to cut through the constant drone of dire obesity warnings from the CDC. The fact is, even if we’re not the size of that poor fellow lumbering ahead of us in the supermarket checkout line, many of us could stand to lose a few pounds.1
Lionel Shriver is not the first novelist to tackle this weighty subject,2 but her latest book, Big Brother, promises a particularly shrewd fictional treatment. Shriver specializes in exploring contemporary issues that, in the hands of a less imaginative writer, would end up as thin “ripped from the headlines” stories or didactic set pieces. Her best work—Big Brother is her twelfth novel—presents characters so fully formed that they inhabit her ideas rather than trumpet them. We Need to Talk About Kevin, published in 2003, was a profound treatment not only of the scourge of school shootings but also of the anxieties that attend modern motherhood. So Much for That, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2010, was a blackly comic rendering of a couple’s experience negotiating America’s byzantine health insurance and medical systems—and their own difficult families—when the wife is diagnosed with a rare cancer.
Shriver doesn’t always hit the mark so squarely. For example, her 2012 novel about terrorism, The New Republic, was too droll and broadly satirical to achieve the emotional resonance of a book like We Need to Talk About Kevin. (She’d written The New Republic 14 years earlier but had trouble getting it published.) But even her lesser work is worth reading. Shriver is less concerned with the pretentious requirements of making art than she is with digging the dirt from under the fingernails of her subject.3
The cause of obesity is the very thing that, in moderation, is necessary to survival. Just where is that glutton-defined Rubicon? Why is it that many of us, even if we aren’t waifs, would never consider crossing it, and others can’t return from the other side?
Food itself is very nearly a character of its own in the book. An over-the-top chocolate-chip pancake breakfast, whipped up by Edison, arrives as an uninvited guest. There are vats of chili and five-cheese lasagnas and, when Pandora’s husband cooks, tempehs and quinoas. So it’s odd that the true pleasures and temptations of food don’t really feature in the book. In spite of the fact that Pandora is a bit pudgy herself, and once ran a catering company, she describes food, not quite credibly, as “the idea of satisfaction, far more powerful than satisfaction itself, which is why diet can exert the sway of religion or political zealotry.”
That cerebral analysis is typical of Pandora’s ruminations, which are rampant and often memorable. (“It is impossible to gauge what you owe people. … As soon as you begin to keep track, to parcel the benevolence out—you’re done for. In for a penny, in for a pound.”) But they emanate from a character who, while excellent literary company, is not quite believable. She’s too self-aware, too analytical, and far too articulate. If Shriver has a weakness, it’s that she can’t write a character who isn’t as sharply observant as she is, and that weakness is acutely evident in Big Brother because of the way Shriver concludes the book. In a sleight-of-hand reminiscent of her alternate-scenario novel The Post-Birthday World, Shriver asks us to look at the story she has just told very differently. But this is hard to do when Pandora’s hyper-descriptive narrative has presented such a precise and complete version of it. The result is an ending that’s a letdown—a rarity for Shriver.
Part of Shriver’s success owes to her gift for giving the social issues she takes on an intensely personal dimension. But there’s a peculiarly immediate and intimate hue to Pandora’s agonizing choice about how far to go in her quest to save Edison. Perhaps that’s because Shriver’s own brother died a few years ago as a result of complications from morbid obesity. Before his death he faced the possibility of bariatric surgery, for which Shriver would have had to put her own life on hold in order to help him recover. Shriver’s own struggle may help explain why Big Brother feels messy, even truncated, the conclusion uneasy.
But at least Big Brother isn’t a quietly devastating novel, conscientiously offering a sensitive treatment of a tragic disease. Instead, Shriver confronts Pandora—and her readers—with the ugly spectacle of death by Cinnabon. It isn’t her style to let her characters go gentle into that good night. Shriver recognizes no sacred cows. At first that makes you trust her less; very soon you grow to trust her more, no matter how many dark alleys she might lead you down.
Sarah L. Courteau is a writer living in the South Bronx. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, the Wilson Quarterly, The American Scholar, and elsewhere.
Overview:
Acclaimed author Lionel Shriver—author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That, The Post-Birthday World, and the vivid psychological novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, now a major motion picture—probes the mystery of charisma in a razor-sharp new novel that teases out the intimate relationship between terrorism and cults of personality, explores what makes certain people so magnetic, and reveals the deep frustrations of feeling overshadowed by a life-of-the-party who may not even be present.
“Shriver is a master of the misanthrope. . . . [A] viciously smart writer.” —Time
“Shriver’s whip-smart observations—about relationships, the role of the media, the cult of personality are funny and on the mark.” (People)
“In her latest novel, Lionel Shriver pays homage to Joseph Conrad—examining terrorism, media bloodlust, and the cult of personality through an unexpected lens of satire.” (Marie Claire, Four New Page-Turners to Keep Bedside)
“A very funny book, but the laughs are embedded in a deeply disturbing subject.” (NPR, "Weekend Edition")
“Shriver is cursed with knowing the human animal all too well. The New Republic is satire of a Shriver kind, that is to say biting.” (Miami Herald)
“Lionel Shriver, the author of the harrowing and patient We Need to Talk About Kevin, delivers something altogether different: a callous and romping political and journalistic satire.” (The Daily Beast-- This Week's Hot Reads)
“Shriver is one of the sharpest talents around.” (USA Today)
“Witty, caustic and worldly, [Shriver] is a raconteur who could show even Barrington Saddler a thing or two about entertaining a crowd.” (Wall Street Journal)
“Shriver has been a National Book Award finalist with good reason: Her page-turners examine serious issues.” (Reader's Digest Recommends)
“A wondrously fanciful plot, vividly drawn characters, clever and cynical dialogue, and a comically brilliant and verisimilar imagined land. . . . The New Republic is simply terrific.” (Booklist (starred review))
“The dialogue zings and the writing is jazzy. . . . [Shriver] can toss off a sharp sketch of a passing character in a phrase, and she’s got a gimlet eye for what’s phony, or affected, or even touchingly vain in human behavior.” (Entertainment Weekly)
“Shriver is an incisive social satirist with a clear grip on the ironies of our contemporary age . . . [Her] take on journalism and international politics is wry, insightful and just over the top enough to be fun.” (Los Angeles Times)
“Shriver is uncannily perceptive[with a] vigorous capacity for compassion . . . [A] surprisingly tender novel disguised as a clever satire delivered in polished prose.” (Philadelphia Inquirer)
“Part Scoop, part Our Man in Havana and part Len Deighton thriller, Shriver’s novel is not just about terrorism but also about journalism and the nature of charisma. . . . Shriver’s Barba is a wonderful creation.” (Financial Times)
ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their
Fellow Men!
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