Big brother - Extrait

by Lionel Shriver

En Iowa, de nos jours.

Femme d'affaires en pleine réussite, mariée à Fletcher, un artiste ébéniste, belle-mère de deux ados, Pandora n'a pas vu son frère Edison depuis quatre ans quand elle accepte de l'héberger.

A son arrivée à l'aéroport, c'est le choc : Pandora avait quitté un jeune prodige du jazz, séduisant et hâbleur, elle trouve un homme obèse, obligé de se déplacer en fauteuil, négligé, capricieux et compulsif. Que s'est-il passé ? Comment Edison a-t-il pu se laisser aller à ce point ? Pandora a-t-elle une responsabilité ?

Entre le très psychorigide Fletcher et le très jouisseur Edison, la tension ne tarde pas à monter, et c'est Pandora qui va en faire les frais. Jusqu'à se retrouver face au pire des dilemmes : choisir entre son époux et son frère.

Qui choisira-t-elle ? Pourra-t-elle sortir son frère de la spirale dans laquelle il s'est enfermé ? Edison le veut-il seulement ? Peut-on sauver malgré eux ceux qu'on aime ?

15 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 10, 2014

About the author

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. Earlier books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and Checker and the Derailleurs. Her novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.

Author photo copyright Jerry Bauer, courtesy of Harper Collins.

Reviews

[mamamunho · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoiler Alert

This was my third Shriver book. It started off well with a great premise - and I like her writing style very much - but as it went on, I just began to find it all unbelievable. The characters. The choices made. Pandora was wealthy: why not pay for proper professional help for Edison - so that as well as weight loss, he could be supported in finding something else to replace food: develop a sense of meaning, be helped to learn to eat proper food again by an expert - all without endangering her marriage? Why didn’t Fletcher suggest this?
Then came the plot twist. I welcomed this only because it made sense of the flat, unbelievable story I’d been increasingly skim-reading: that story wasn’t true after all. But it didn’t feel like a brilliant or shocking plot twist (see Life of Pi), more just a “oh, ok” moment. Pandora now felt like an unreliable narrator and I didn’t really care what happened to any of the characters in those final pages.
The book raised some really interesting points about family loyalty (seems like a recurring theme for Shriver) and about finding meaning in life, but I ended up feeling I’d been bingeing on something that looked great on the packaging but had little nutritional value.

Also, for what it’s worth, I happen to like Bridge Over Troubled Water, so maybe I was always going to struggle with liking Pandora.

[Rachelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my least favourite Shriver book, probably not least because I opted to read it in French. The accounts of obesity and dieting are discomforting (Shriver’s specialty) and the book is just too drawn out for my taste.

[Heather Angus-Leppan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tragic book, so gripping with twists in the plot. The ending had some glibness which I didn’t like.