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Big Brother

By: Lionel Shriver
Narrated by: Alice Rosengard
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Publisher's summary

‘A gutsy, heartfelt novel’ Sunday Times

‘[Shriver’s] best novel yet’ Independent on Sunday

‘A surprising sledgehammer of a novel’ The Times

‘Shriver is brilliant on the novel shock that is hunger… glorious, fearless, almost fanatically hard-working prose’ Guardian

‘Lionel Shriver's Big Brother has the muscle to overpower its readers. It is a conversation piece of impressive heft’ New York Times

‘Shriver is wonderful at the things she is always wonderful at. Pace and plot. . . . Psychology’ Independent

‘The latest compelling, humane and bleakly comic novel from the author of We Need to Talk about KevinEvening Standard

‘Her best work… presents characters so fully formed that they inhabit her ideas rather than trumpet them’ New Republic

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. It asks just how much sacrifice we’ll make to save single members of our families, and whether it’s ever possible to save loved ones from themselves.

©2013 Lionel Shriver (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
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Critic reviews

"Shriver proves she is not afraid of anything." ( Observer)
"If Jodi Picoult has her finger on the zeitgeist, Shriver has her hands around its throat." ( Washington Post)
"Shriver has the kind of cojones few English-language novelists possess, male or female." ( Globe & Mail)
"Her work is all the more valuable for its flagrant defiance of political correctness." ( The Times)

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interesting, timely, insightful

I loved her We Need to Talk about Kevin for its sharpness and laconic cynicism. Now I can't say I exactly loved Big Brother, but I did like it a lot. It's just as sharp and diamond-clear in its sparse style, and ** minor spoiler alert ** there is a twist at the end. It does explain away a lot of the stuff that seemed off-key along the way. And it is, again, a book of and for the times.

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