June 2012 Book of the Month and eBook of the Month.
Through the character of Edgar Kellogg, ex fat kid, ex corporate lawyer and now wannabe journalist, Shriver explores the lengths you’ll go to and the things you’ll do when you are desperate to be known. It’s also important to remember, and interesting to note, when you read this that it was written in 1998, five years before her Orange Prize winner. A time capsule piece of wit, cynicism and satire.
A scalpel-sharp political satire from the Orange Prize winning writer of We Need to Talk about Kevin Ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. A disgruntled corporate lawyer, he's more than ready to leave his lucrative career for the excitement and uncertainty of journalism. When he's offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a home-grown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emulate. Infuriatingly, all his fellow journalists cannot stop talking about their beloved Bear, who is no longer lighting up their work lives. Yet all is not as it appears. Os Soldados Ousados De Barba - The Daring Soldiers of Barba - have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for a province so dismal, backward and windblown that you couldn't give the rat hole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do terrorist incidents claimed by the SOB suddenly dry up? A droll, playful novel, The New Republic addresses weighty issues like terrorism with the deft, tongue-in-cheek touch that is vintage Shriver. It also presses the more intimate question: What makes particular people so magnetic, while the rest of us inspire a shrug? What's their secret? And in the end, who has the better life -- the admired, or the admirer?
'Wide-ranging, sometimes zany and unpredictable, this is a compelling read. And however many twists Shriver shoves in, you always believe her The Times
'Many people will like Lionel Shriver's ninth novel -- admirers of gripping and clever contemporary fiction, discerning critics and, if there is any justice, literary prize committees' Guardian
'Shriver proves she is not afraid of anything!' Observer
'It's a wonder that subject matter on the surface so bleak can be transformed into something so uplifting' Daily Telegraph
'Yes, a brilliantly funny cancer book! You can rely on Lionel Shriver to upend your expectations' Daily Express
'Required reading for all mortals' Daily Mail
'witty, observant and beautifully controlled. British readers will close this excellent novel feeling grateful for the NHS' Literary Review
'a visceral and deeply affecting story, a story about how illness affects people's relationships, and how their efforts to grapple with mortality reshape the arcs of their lives' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Author
About Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver's novels include the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Other books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and So Much for That. Lionel’s novels have been translated into twenty-five different languages and. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She lives in London.
