Lionel Shriver is, first and foremost, a woman (for those of you who didn't know, I figured I should set things straight as I did previously spend half a talk thinking Mark Haddon was Shriver...). You will most likely know her as the award-winning novelist behind We Need to Talk About Kevin, a book that touched a lot of nerves but was, and not just for that reason, completely brilliant.
A couple of years ago I attended an event held at Foyles on Charing Cross Road celebrating 21 years of the Random House imprint, Vintage. I'm a big fan of Vintage books... they have an impressive lineup of writers and their signature spines make my bookshelf look really pretty and they totally match my duvet cover. As a Vintage author, Lionel Shriver attended the event to discuss her work as well as one of her favourite novels, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates - you're starting to see why I might like this woman... Anyway, after a narrow miss of finding out the ending before I'd even started (thanks to a ridiculous, inane and frankly offensive question from a strange woman with bizarre hair in the front row), I decided it was about time I picked up Kevin.
Not only did I love the book but there is something so wonderfully frank about Lionel Shriver and you really have to go and see her to know what I mean. She creates, somehow, a weird infectious awkwardness. Tuesday night at the Purcell Room in the Southbank Centre was no different. Someone somewhere had paired her up with the most inappropriate interviewer imaginable. You have to be on your toes, witty and difficult to intimidate to interview Shriver because she's not going to pussyfoot around things.
The one thing Shriver wanted us to walk away with was that her new novel, Big Brother, that looks primarily at the effect obesity and our relationships with food, is most definitely not autobiographical. That is all very well, but the fact of the matter is that the concept was inspired by real events. Shriver lost her own brother to obesity two years ago. Had he survived, her family would have faced having him move in with them and this novel seems to have grown out of the 'what ifs' of Shriver's situation.
Shriver spoke touchingly of the relationships between siblings - one that I value myself immensely - but she did not at any point use her brother to sell this book. From an extract she read, Shriver once again seems effortlessly to elicit recognition and understanding from her readers through her writing. Even if the instances in her novels appear to be entirely personal and unique to the character, you are still able to think 'yes, that totally applies to me).
If you get the chance to see Shriver talk, do it. She's hilarious, she's honest to the point of awkwardness at times but how refreshing to hear someone say what they think than what they think you want to hear. As a result, you may not always agree... but that's quite fun. Plus she rights a great story.
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