Mania: A Novel

by Lionel Shriver

Overview

In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is "the last great civil rights fight." Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word ("stupid") and encouraged to report parents who use it at home. A college English instructor, the constitutionally rebellious Pearson Converse rejected her restrictive Jehovah's Witness upbringing as a teenager, and so has an aversion to dogma of any kind. Made impotent in the university classroom, she's also enraged by the crushing of her exceptionally bright children's spirits in primary school. Fortunately, she enjoys the confidence of a best friend, a media commentator with whom she can speak frankly about her socially unacceptable contempt for the MP movement. Or at least she thinks she can... until one day the political chasm between the two women becomes uncrossable, and a lifelong relationship implodes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063360440
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/09/2024
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Lionel Shriver has published many novels, a collection of essays, and a column in the Spectator since 2017, and her journalism has been featured in publications including, The Guardian, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

Hometown:

Brooklyn, New York, and London, England

Date of Birth:

May 18, 1957

Place of Birth:

Gastonia, North Carolina

Education:

B.A., Barnard College of Columbia University, 1978; M.F.A. in Fiction Writing, Columbia University, 1982

Website:

http://www.talkaboutkevin.com

Editorial Reviews

"Never shy of getting stuck in, Shriver now sets her satirical sights on groupthink and the policing of thought." — Financial Times

"Clever." — Los Angeles Times

“Merciless and funny . . . . the novel’s themes—of society’s quick pivots when it comes to socially acceptable beliefs, and how close friendships can be poisoned by the culture wars—feel like a welcome distraction, given their slightly (but not unbelievably) absurd elements.” — The Economist

“Readers craving sharp social commentary need look no further than Shriver, who is at the top of her game with this scary-smart and scathing satire.” — Booklist (starred review)

 “Shriver . . . suffuses this cogent tale of a toxic friendship with contrarian political commentary. . . . Those sympathetic toward Shriver’s anti-groupthink message will find much to enjoy.” — Publishers Weekly

"Seldom is a book as funny, important and timely . . . I was laughing out loud at the same time as my blood was running cold." — John Cleese

"Viciously funny . . . . An exhilarating satire." — The Times (UK)

"An uproarious tale of holier-than-thou posturing." — Mail on Sunday

"Provocative, stimulating, and outrageous." — The Spectator

"A savage dystopian satire." — The Scotsman

From the Publisher

2024-01-05
America is overtaken by an idiocracy in Shriver’s latest satire/anti-PC screed.

In this tale of alternative recent history, circa 2010 the word stupid has become verboten, thanks to the rise of a “Mental Parity” movement that insists nobody is smarter than anyone else. Narrating this lamentable turn of events is Pearson Converse, a college English teacher, mother of three, and fierce critic of the campaign against “smartism” and the “brain-vain” that strictly prohibits all variations of the S-word. (She’s nearly fired when she cheekily assigns her class Dostoevsky’s The Idiot.) In the years that follow, Shriver chronicles the intensifying catastrophe of this anti-intellectual effort: The crossword is canceled, the Mars rover crashes, Osama bin Laden gets away, gay marriage remains illegal, China tramples the U.S. on the world stage. On the home front, Pearson’s two very gifted children grow slack in the absence of academic rigor, while her third, less-bright child turns informant on her mom. Pearson’s partner, a tree surgeon, suffers for lack of competent assistance; her journalist best friend, once as exasperated with “cognitive justice” as Pearson, turns into its vocal supporter, a move Shriver depicts as vile Vichy collaborationism. Practically every Shriver book in the past decade has been a critique of liberal hobbyhorses; imagining a made-in-the-U.S.A. Cultural Revolution, for her, is business as usual. But without a clear sense of what kind of tyranny of the (lib) commons Shriver fears—DEI? the language police? socialism? virtue signaling? grade inflation?—the conceit is a better fit for a tart short story than an extended narrative. And given that today’s most robust anti-intellectual initiatives come from right-wing quarters—book bans, shutdowns of college liberal arts departments, efforts to drain public school funds—Shriver’s process for picking a target seems, let’s say, cognitively subpar.

A peculiar novel driven more by bogeymen than brains.

Kirkus Reviews