Product Description

Following the success of 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' and 'The Post-Birthday World', 'A Perfectly Good Family' is coming back into print after being unavailable for years. Following the death of her worthy liberal parents, Corlis McCrea moves back into her family's grand Reconstruction mansion in North Carolina, willed to all three siblings. Her timid younger brother has never left home. When her bullying black-sheep older brother moves into 'his' house as well, it's war. Each heir wants the house. Yet to buy the other out, two siblings must team against one. Just as in girlhood, Corlis is torn between allying with the decent but fearful youngest and the iconoclastic eldest, who covets his legacy to destroy it. 'A Perfectly Good Family' is a stunning examination of inheritance, literal and psychological: what we take from our parents, what we discard, and what we are stuck with, like it or not.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15554 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback

Review
Praise for The Post-Birthday World: 'Those of us who rave about the dash and dare of Lionel Shriver's fiction can rejoice that The Post-Birthday World, a 'Sliding Doors'-style joint tale of alternative loves and lives, will garner the attention she always deserves' Independent 'Shriver gives us another passionate novel!Like Sliding Doors, the tale splits into two, following the dramatic turns of each choice. Brilliant' Cosmopolitan 'It's another domestic drama with a compelling twist!the power struggle between the sexes is spot-on. Shriver chalks her narrative cue with relish and, once the story gets underway, it's hard to take your eyes off the green baize' Tatler "The Post-Birthday World' is Lionel Shriver's forthcoming work about the dilemmas of love -- a must if you were gripped by 'We Need To Talk About Kevin" Harper's Bazaar

About the Author
Lionel Shriver is a novelist whose previous books include Orange Prize-winner 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', 'The Post-Birthday World', 'A Perfectly Good Family', 'Game Control', 'Double Fault', 'The Female of the Species', 'Checker and the Derailleurs' and 'Ordinary Decent Criminals'. She is widely published as a journalist, writing features, columns, op-eds, and book reviews for the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Marie Claire, and many other publications. She is frequently interviewed on television, radio, and in print media. She lives in London and Brooklyn, NY.

Customer Reviews

Families are funny things
Families are funny things. WE can moan about them all we like to our mates, but stand up for them with grit if anyone else pipes up. So I can't fathom why someone would want to publicly explore a family which is very close to their real-life set -up.I couldn't deal with the indignation, or the letters or the silence which the author recieved when her family read this.

Although totally engaging, the characters in this are flawed and unsympathetic, which is how real people are innit? Corlis infuriated me, with her lack of decisiveness, as did Trueman - a grown up who was whinier than a teething baby. Eldest brother Mordecai was spot on for the time - all long plaits, meat and grunge - and reminded me of many men I've met who desperately try to be provocative in order to hide the softness underneath.

The idea that adults feel like they are entitled to their parents belongings no matter what fascinates me. If someone leaves you something fair enough, but to ffeel liek you;re owed just because you exist is madness. So the central story grabbed me from the outset, although I really wanted at least one the chracaters to realise they were not entitled.

I loved the way she spun this - from an interesting premise, past arguments and grudges right up to the unexpected ending - and whilst this may not be the most flattering portrait of families , it was honest and unflinching, funny and embarrassing, just the like the best families.

sibling relationships
It is ludicrous that more of Lionel Shriver's earlier books aren't in print in the UK and this, I guess, is where Amazon comes into its own! If you like her style and topics (and I do), this is a very interesting take on family life: in that case the adult siblings working out what to do about the family home they have jointly inherited. Bits seemed unrealistic to me, but the style is one readers of 'Kevin' and the 'Post-birthday world' will recognise. In the same way as both of these it makes me think about myself in similar situations (thankfully not one I've had to face yet) hope that my brother and I will acquit ourselves better when the time comes!! At least Shriver's fairly negative (or at least far from rose-tinted) views of family life, families leave some room for optimism in thinking about my own family!

Disappointing compared to her other books
Having thoroughly enjoyed other books by Lionel Shriver, notably the excellent '...Kevin', I bought this with enthusiasm and was quite disappointed. Although it is well written and has memorable characters and a few memorable lines which have stayed with me, I felt it was a bit slow overall and nothing I cared about really happened.