Big Brother

Sunday Times‘A gutsy, heartfelt novel’

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

‘A surprising sledgehammer of a novel’The Times

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

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