It begins with two healthy and vital medical professionals in their early fifties. In her latest masterpiece, Should We Stay or Should We Go, probably my favourite, the ever-prescient Shriver is hilariously macabre and devastatingly insightful. In The Mandibles she imagines America’s economic and infrastructural collapse, the horror of it all captured by the moment in which people run out of, wait for it, toilet paper. Big Brother delves into the thorny issue of obesity and the emotional connection between weight, eating, shame and control. In So Much for That, she presents a scathing indictment of the US healthcare system. In the polarising We Need to Talk About Kevin, set in a time when school shootings were rampant in the US, a mother documents her attempt to come to terms with the murderous actions of her psychopathic son, Kevin. Shriver is known for tackling contentious topics. A 2016 review in the New York Times called Lionel Shriver the “Cassandra of American letters” and reminded readers that “the curse of Cassandra, after all, was that she told the truth”.
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