Game Control

by Lionel Shriver

From the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin comes a grimly comic tale of bad ideas and good intentions. With a deft, droll touch, Shriver highlights the hypocrisy of lofty intellectuals who would "save" humanity but who don't like people. Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition. Set against the vivid backdrop of modern-day Africa, Game Control is a wry, sardonic conspiracy story about bad ideas and good intentions.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Literary Fiction, Romance, Audiobook, Book Club, Novels

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

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

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my opinion this is not the best of Lionel Shriver's novels. The story is inventive but the it is difficult to warm to any of the characters or care about their fate. The basic premise of the novel and the theoretical underpinnng of the politics of population control is interesting but it is difficult to invest emotionally with the characters.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh dear oh dear!

This reads like the first novel of a 21 y/o former teen bully who thinks that the fact she went on a gap year to Kenya is so interesting it supersedes the requirements of other novels, namely a plot, anyone to root for, decent research or non-laziness in general.

Almost all Shriver novels suffer in the above departments, it’s worth pointing out. In order to scour her books for her insights and hard truths that you know but that no one will say, delivering relief and kinship, you have to put up with big rambles and garrulous pontifications and the least likeable people you’ve ever met in literature delivering speeches of near Ayn Rand proportions that you wish would all just die already if they didn’t have just one more interesting thing to say. And the wildest speech tags you’ve ever read in your life! Groaned, concurred…. I’m drawing a blank, thankfully. And the character names? What has she got against Steve Smith or Holly Jones? Eva Khatchadourian? Glynis Knacker? Is this a sci-fi? So bad.

Shriver says she writes about characters that are hard to love. Hard to love for sure, but hard to like? Having read so much of her books now I think I’ve figured it out: she has a hatred for sincerity. She wants to eliminate genuine affection or the basic everyday signs of love. It blows my mind whenever her characters confess their love for each other (hey, this is obvs a delicate thing to get right: you never know when you’ve demonstrated enough chemistry because no one understands love) or agree to do stuff to help each other out: I have to flick back any number of pages to see if I missed the point at which they expressed any interest in each other! (Nope, there isn’t one: without evidence, you are asked just to believe it- poor form.)

Stephen King I think rightly said that all bad writing comes from fear, and Shriver’s fear is triteness. But she disproves the hypotheses set out by her books that suggest that any relationship can feasibly survive without a drop of affection: it can’t. It makes for unrealistic, tedious and repellent reading.

Though to be fair, Shriver’s not great at finding things in life to enjoy, or if she is, she’s really bad at communicating that. The essay at the end of Ordinary Decent Criminals read like ‘I used to deliberately punish myself with long bike rides and fasting for no reason. I hated it. Now I don’t, and I hate it! I need wine for life. Do you like it? Good for you. Fuck off: the end.’ Her Guardian essay post-Kevin success was like ‘Omg, now I have money I can’t pity myself. ARRGHHHH.’ Her Big Think video was worth watching though because she smiles and laughs when she’s talking at places you wouldn’t expect, but on paper, nothing seems as comic as perhaps intended. Anyways, holding my attention for this many books is pretty impressive!

On a wider scale, there’s things I see many writers doing that is just creepy. In an attempt to give you an intimate picture of a couple, they’ll tell you really weird stuff they like about each other. In this case, one guy wistfully reminisces that his former girlfriend always stank. In Double Fault, Willy (HAH!) loved that her husband’s tennis stuff came back all sweaty, and she taped one of his long grey eyebrows to her wall. In A Perfectly Good Family, one of the characters had two girlfriends and had “a waxy coating” of plaque lining his gums because he didn’t brush his teeth and liked how he tasted. CREEPY!! Not just Shriver: in Fates and Furies, after seeing her husband’s opera, Mathilde, overjoyed by his vision, licked him from his neck up the length of his face. It’s not an intimate portrayal, it’s just disgusting: it repels; it has the exact opposite effect intended. Luckily Juan doesn’t read my reviews or having learned how I’d hate it if someone licked my face, he’d feel overwhelmingly compelled to do it (I know the guy) and we would need a divorce. I know private things about people, but only the type they’re willing to share: if one of my friends is privately proud of a massive shit he produced, I’m happy he’s happy but if he tries to describe it I’ll leave, know what I mean? Everything intimate or everything private does not instantly evoke curiosity or interest. I almost see what these details are trying to do, but also I don’t…

A recap:

The Female of the Species: got lost in the post, I think. 0*: what a bad performance.
Checker and the Derailleurs: 3* Skippable. Baggy.
Ordinary Decent Criminals: 3*. Had its moments. Skippable. Rambling and Baggy.
Game Control. More like Lame Con-LOL!!
A Perfectly Good Family: Oh yeah! I read this. 3*. Skippable, baggy. Rambling.
Double Fault: 4*. Skippable. Not bad, but done better elsewhere.
We Need to Talk about Kevin. 8888*- have you not read this yet?! Then at least live like your heart is intact enough to break at least one more time, because I know it is! Start here and read forwards in time: you can miss anything that came before.
The New Republic: Why should I read this?
Big Brother: 5* If you are a Shriver fan and overlook her Shriving. Post-Kevin she starts to strike social taboo gold, and all those years of practice going for jugulars begins to pay off.

So I have So Much For That and The Post-Birthday World left to read. Promising since they are late Shrivers but I did abandon So Much last year for its relentless misery, so we’ll see.
Okay so I need a break from Shriver, which means I can now make hopefully short work of the wealth of indie material I have gratefully received. However will I get through all these passionate works by ordinary people eager to fight for my attention to communicate what they care about in a clear voice. Oh no.

Leo Robertson: 10 years Shriving so you don’t have to :D

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately this book speaks to me a little too much.

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I give up. Just can't do it.

Begging for a book to be over is not the way reading should be.

Shriver's usually great, but this one was painful.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eleanor Merritt is an American-born aid worker in her late 30s travelling around her part of Africa with a briefcase full of condoms and preaching birth control in a land where nobody's taking much notice. Eleanor is a woman who's easy to ignore even though she speaks Swahili and tries very hard to please everyone. She feels terribly embarrassed about having staff, is a soft touch for everyone around her with their hand out and suffers (or perhaps enjoys) social invisibility. Eleanor lacks confidence in herself and her professional role and wonders if she'll ever find a man to make her feel special. Every relationship goes bad – for example, there was one guy who went back to the USA for three weeks holiday and just never came back. Keeping that in mind, she seems to be barking up entirely the wrong tree by falling for Calvin Piper, the ex-elephant culler turned demographer and disgraced ex-head of an American aid agency who was sacked for supplying abortion equipment to African clinics. Eleanor and Calvin have 'history' – they shared a single night of what might be called passion in any other man but seems misplaced in his case a decade and a half before but Calvin's changed.

Calvin has given up on sex and pretty much given up on emotions and humankind too though he seems to have a grudging fondness for his pet green monkey who travels around sitting on his shoulder. Calvin is a man so cold and misanthropic that he tells anyone who'll listen that the only way forward is mass control of the population. He points out that birth control just isn't working and the planet can't keep supporting the booming population. Something drastic is needed and he has plenty of rat experiments up his sleeve to paint a picture of what would happen to society if nothing is done to stem the human flood. In the opposite corner sits his arch nemesis, Wallace Threadgill, who maintains that population growth fires up creativity, leads to evolution and the generation of great ideas and invention. He puts it to Eleanor that in the time it took for the world population to double, food output went up four-fold. Population growth must, therefore, be a good thing. The truth probably sits somewhere between the two ideas of the two men but neither is flexible.

Game Control takes the issue of population control far further than might be expected in a novel with a love story at its heart but perhaps given that it's a Lionel Shriver novel we shouldn't be surprised. Why would a woman who is best known for tackling the issues of a mother who hates her child and a child who becomes a killer (in We Need to Talk About Kevin) be nervous about proposing an audacious plan to wipe out one-third of humanity? For that's what Calvin Piper has in mind and along the way he wants to corrupt Eleanor and recruit her to his cause. When Eleanor accidentally finds out more than she needed or wanted to know about the mysterious QUIETUS organisation, she's got no real option but to get involved and work with Calvin. The question is who will corrupt whom? Can Calvin 'turn' Eleanor before her inherent 'goodness' does him in?

The book is set in Tanzania and Kenya with occasional forays off to other parts of the world but the African 'angle' is fascinating. I have a friend currently working in West Africa for (of all the crazy and unlikely organisations) the Tony Blair Faith Foundation after spending a year with VSO. In under 2 years, she's already pretty burned out by the African aid 'circus' so I can only imagine how long-timers like Eleanor, Calvin and Wallace could lose their grasp of reality. Shriver is fantastic at describing the Kenyan city where much of the action takes place. In one passage she describes a building where Calvin has an office as having “the rounded contours preferred by architects in the mid-sixties with a penchant for designing office buildings to resemble giant toiletries” before going on to say that this looks like a 22-storey tampon holder. When I read that I knew EXACTLY what she meant and exactly how such a building would look.

I know there are many people who think that natural and man-made disasters in Africa and elsewhere are just mother nature redressing the balance and who think wishy-washy bleeding heart liberals (small 'l') like myself are just mugs for supporting disaster relief so I came at this book from a stance that made me naturally anti-everything Calvin stood for. As he develops his devious plans to annihilate two billion people, even I couldn't help but get caught up in what was going on. Would AIDS do the job for Calvin and QUIETUS or would their secret high tech lab come up with a fiendishly demonic virus or plague to achieve their mission? Calvin should surely have had a bald head and a white Persian cat rather than no sex-drive and a tame monkey.

There's a lot to admire about Shriver's book – the creativity for a start, the wonderfully villainous baddie and the juxtaposing of the culling of animals with the problem of human overpopulation. Shriver is never scared to make her 'heroines' hard to like or her plot lines difficult to swallow and of the three of her books that I've read, poor weak love-lorn Eleanor is probably the least detestable leading lady despite all her failings. Shriver explains in an afterword in my Harper edition that the book lost her the support of her American publisher and cost her a year living in Nairobi and no book had been harder to write. I can believe all those things. If you think of the vitriol she received for 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' from people who accuse her of hating children just because her character guns down dozens of his classmates, you can only imagine how the publishers thought a book proposing to kill off 2 billion people would go down. She tells us a large part of the hard copy run was unsold and went to pulp.

A few things just didn't work for me though. Chief amongst these was the repeated appearances of Panga, Calvin's dead ex-lover who brings a ridiculous sense that the author has lost touch with what's otherwise a harshly realistic look at what a man with a mission and good funding might be able to do. Calvin books an extra seat on the plane and room in a hotel for Panga so she won't have to 'sit on the wing'. I would happily have seen Shriver's editor take a big thick red pen through all the passages referring to Panga's ghost. The woman herself is perhaps needed as an explanation for Calvin's coldness but her ghost is just a silly detour that doesn't add credibility to the story. The mysterious research centre and the evil cabal of baddies gathered around Calvin are very 1970's James Bond in flavour but if you're going to buy into the idea of mass murder on an unprecedented scale, why shouldn't you accept some colourful characters? Even Calvin shows a tiny glimmer or humanity – he's asked the scientists to please come up with something that won't kill Jews because they've already had a bad enough time in the Second World War.

I didn't like or enjoy 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', I loved 'The Post Birthday World' but I think 'Game Control has just crept ahead of TPBW on my Shriver list. I've a couple more at home to try – I think I'll be bumping them up the pile after reading this one.

[Cat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably the worst book I've ever read. There was no plot, no character development, no enjoyment. I couldn't wait for it to be over.

[Jayne Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am used to being challenged by Lionel Shriver's books: they are always full of intelligent insight and dense prose. But there is usually a compelling plot driving thing along, and in this particular novel I felt the balance between plot and analysis, however intelligent, had been tipped too far in the wrong direction.

There can't be many novels written entirely about demography so top marks both for originality and research. It got me thinking about a school geography project I did 35 years ago - among the topics to choose from was population, and I immediately homed in on it, the idea of pages of numbers appealing to my aspergic tendencies. It wasn't long before I realised this topic was literally all about sex. What a shock that was to my queasy 12 year old self and I promptly abandoned it in favour of coastal erosion. But what's wrong with a book all about sex when you're an adult? Absolutely nothing, except that this one was full of people theorising out loud and avoiding having sex. The central character, beleaguered family planning worker Eleanor, is merely a conduit as she visits first one intellectual who regales her with his theories about population control, then she visits another who presents the opposite point of view. A meeting between the two opposing intellectuals ensues and they argue wordily with each other about population control. And repeat.

Stick with it and a plot with major dramatic potential does emerge, but it does take persistence. Arriving there was like reaching the summit of Everest: you want to stand and look around for a while and reflect on just how few people have stood where you are. It is clear from the author's afterword that this wasn't a massive commercial success, and that indeed its published form is some one hundred manuscript pages short of its original length ("so readers count your blessings" she comments sardonically). A book to read for the sake of completeness and for the thought provoking points it puts forward. I can't deny that I'm far better informed about demography than I was when I picked it up.

[Charlotte Tressler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't understand all the one- and two-star reviews of Game Control, especially from readers who claim to be die-hard fans of Lionel Shriver. Aren't odd names and outlandish premises part of what we love about her work? I also couldn't help but think of Margaret Atwood's explanation of the premise of The Handmaid's Tale, how everything that happened to June in Gilead--no matter how unlikely it may have seemed--had been based on real events from around the world. Although Shriver doesn't state this in the author interview in my copy, I'll bet the same could be said of Game Control.

Oh, and the writing. I love it when a line resonates with such strength that I have to stop and reread it, type it up and send it to a friend, or jot it down in my notebook. This happened four times in 277 pages. I'd say that's quite a literary feat.

pg. 13: She was only aware in later years, once her looks had begun to slip, that she had once been rather pretty.

pg. 58: Such miracles of taxidermy might have cautioned Eleanor to age with more grace, but she herself had never felt dazzling, and perhaps this was the compensation: that in later years, at least she would not delude herself she had retained the powers she never thought she wielded in the first place.

pg. 71: When you try too hard to be no trouble, you often cause a great deal of it.

pg. 218: His dreams reduced a brilliant, controversial intellect in the flutter of an eyelid to a boy wandering public school corridors in his undershorts.

Game Control is a beautifully written book about a very ugly topic, with complicated and not-very-likeable characters. It's definitely worth a read.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Game Control is the fifth novel by American author, Lionel Shriver. This novel is set in Kenya in the early 1990s and concerns demographics and AIDs. The main characters are a vengeful misanthrope, Calvin Piper, and a guilty do-gooder, Eleanor Merritt. Eleanor works for a Family Planning agency and encounters the charismatic Piper at various Aid conferences. Despite his provocative and controversial opinions about population control (eg allow infant mortality to increase by stopping vaccination), Eleanor falls in love with Piper. But Piper declares himself incapable of love since the death of his black African mercenary girlfriend, Panga (who haunts his cottage still, offering commentary and opinion). In his genial despair, Piper’s sparring partner on population matters is the morbidly euphoric Wallace Threadgill, a continuing source of optimistic clippings from papers and magazines. When Eleanor accidentally stumbles on Piper’s solution to the population explosion, her love for Piper is tested against her commitment to humanity. In this blackly comic offering, Shriver deftly presents two sides of the population control debate, while illustrating the power of statistics. Shriver’s extensive research is apparent in every paragraph. Brilliant.

[Hannah Wingfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lionel Shriver is one of my favourite authors – We Need To Talk About Kevin is one of my favourite books, and thoughts about So Much For That still linger closely months after I finished it – but sadly this is the first novel of hers that I’ve read and just didn’t like. I pondered over giving it three stars just because Lionel Shriver writes so well, but skilled phrasing alone wasn’t enough to rescue this book – if it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t have finished the book at all, and at times I did feel like giving up. It took me over a week to get through this and I found myself wanting to surf the internet on my phone or watch TV during my usual reading times just to avoid it, so in the end told myself just to power through the last half, which still took two days. Admittedly the second half was better than the first, largely because it has An Actual Plot, unlike the novel’s opening, but this in itself was rather bizarre – why introduce thriller elements to what has began as a character study/sort-of-love-story (albeit without any love or even sex)?

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/...]

[Vonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I truly could not imagine a Margaret Ann writing any of these books, which would be the truth, had Lionel Shriver not legally changed her name. The easily recognizable voice she carries in all her novels has wit, sarcasm, candor, and a dark side a "Margaret Ann" simply could not carry. Alas, we as readers fortunately do not need to worry about that.

To begin with, this novel is about two things, arguably in equal doses. First, the relationship between warm-hearted, Goody Two Shoes, "I am a burden for living at all" Eleanor & almost complete opposite sarcastic, apathetic, sociopath, proudly eleven years celibate, "I do not care about anyone/anything" Calvin. Eleanor, in a classic opposites attract/want what you cannot have scenario, sticks to Calvin like glue, gallivanting after him even though he treats her with little respect and his own version of care, because, of course, he cannot care about anyone, least of all some altruistic woman. As expected, there is a story. Calvin's heart was hardened when his one love, Panga (an African arms expert/mercenary/hired murderer) drowned to death, possibly due in some part to his negligence. Less expected, she floats around his & Eleanor's lives, literally. As some very "present" spirit.

Secondly, demography. Demography is defined as. Well, Doctor Calvin here believes that, well, the right solution to our world's population problems is to murder two billion individuals, by random mandatory Russian Roulette by the year 1999 (takes place in the early 1990s?). Let me state what seems obvious to me. His deplorable, unkind (to say it generously) personality got really old, really fast. Probably by the second chapter, the novelty was gone, I was done listening to his claims that he was "pre-dead", that he could therefore not have any sexual intimacy, that he cared for no one, nothing. His only reason for living is Pachyderm, the name for the yet-to-be-discovered magical formula that will mass murder the precise number of individuals his company has deemed ideal. Pachyderm is now seven years in the making. Why so long? Well, there are many parameters, mostly created by Calvin. For example, The AIDS virus will not work because it targets at an unequal distribution on the socioeconomic strata, while the "correct" airborne virus will leave a sufficient adult workforce. In other parameters, Calvin has decided to find a way to exclude all Jews. He feels they have already paid their dues.

His team, QUIETUS (Quorum of United International Efforts at Triage for Ultimate Sustainability), has over three hundred employees, quarantined in a secret lab, accessible only by air. No one can ever leave.

This great man, so vain, so unlovable except by this pretty unbelievable Eleanor, started as a representative for The USAID's Population Division. That is, until he was discovered sending birth control, vacuum aspirators, and the like to countries where they were illegal. Since then, clearly, his aspirations have only become much more ambitious.

And so, what do we have? Not much to love unless demography is a passion of yours. It is therefore not shocking that this was one of Shriver's least successful ventures, losing her a publisher for a couple titles, according to her. We have one easily hateable main character, supposedly hero. An almost equally hateable heroine if for nothing else her stupidity; her willingness to do everything for said lead male. Then a lot of research on the world's population problems, demography, epidemiology, how life is in Africa these days. Thus, as an educational, informational source? Excellent. As an endearing, even fun fictional story? Not so much. Average at best, only because Shriver knows how to write.

[Kelly Lamb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like many other readers, I was drawn to this book because I was so caught up in Shriver's writing after reading Kevin. However, this book is different in so many ways. The premise is interesting--population control experts create a grisly method of bringing down worldwide population numbers. Morality becomes relative, etc. etc. That's what made me pick it up in the first place.

Where I got lost was in the extreme research detail that Shriver uses at times. I was listening to the audiobook, and I found that there were 10 minute periods where I could just zone out, and not miss a thing about the plot. The characters are hard to love (though I suppose this was the case with Kevin too, in many ways...but at least they were DOING interesting things).

In the end, I was just left with a feeling of...that's it? I don't know, it was a bit unsatisfying. I agree with other reviewers that the ghost subplot is odd--it's one thing to be haunted by your past, it's another thing to have a full-on, walk-through-walls ghost as a semi-important character.

I will say, for any listening to the audio CD, that the narrator (Merlington) is fantastic--she really helped keep me listening! But overall, if you're looking for something on-par with Shriver's other work, this doesn't quite make the grade.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've discovered that Lionel Shriver has a knack for picking out topics that I find interesting, and twisting them into amazing novels that I love and hate at the same time.

In her novel, "Game Control," Shriver's lead characters are a thirty-eight-year old woman who works with a family planning organization in Africa and a disgraced researcher of population control who is plotting ways to drastically alter the steep incline of growth in the Third World. The material presented is dense, with Shriver having conducted extensive research in demography, family planning, and population studies; however, it is skillfully presented, with dialogue and arguments flying such that you may agree with both sides at the same time without realizing it.

Although this novel will not be as generally engaging as "Kevin" or "The Post-Birthday World" due to its content and the issues addressed, it is definitely worth a read, especially for those who see the problems of an expanding human population, and who may sometimes give thought to the future of humans as a specie.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eleanor Merritt is a family planning worker in Kenya, who falls in love with Calvin Piper, an intellectual and scientist with some controversial ideas about population control in the poor. The book is clearly well researched, examining the pros and cons of family planning, population control and the AIDS epidemic. Shriver manages to make an interesting storyline out of it - the love story is fortunately the backdrop for the majority of the book, rather than the foreground. Would have scored higher if she had not tried to work in a very tenuous (and unnecessary) ghost story into the plot, and the ending could have been better. Worth a read though, and definitely gets you thinking.

[B the BookAddict · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think if this book had not been written by Lionel Shriver, I would have not continued after the first 50 pages or so. The statistics were really heavy and slow going but I will admit, very scary as well. I did wait patiently for the usual Shriver acerbic wit to appear but it was not really evident at all. A satire??? where an American demographer/population control expert veers off the rails and plots to solve the population problem in a very sinister manner. Shriver did spend 12 months living in Nairobi researching this book and the background for the story is precise. Only 3★ here.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit disappointing -- I keep trying to get through everything that Lionel Shriver has written, but apart from We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Post Birthday World (both of which I adored), I've been slightly let down. This book (similar to So Much For That) ended up being a diatribe. I felt like I was reading (or talking to) a political activist/extremist for most of it. I found myself just wishing that the preaching would stop. Repetitive? Um, yes. When she finally decided to wrap it up, she had to resort to a contrite and convenient ending that seemed just about as plausible as the original idea for the book. Could have skipped this one.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is very intelligent, and the topic of global population and its effects (as well as how best to address the issue) is fascinating. But the plot fell apart about halfway through the book, after veering off into fantastical territory. I wasn't really sold on the characters, and didn't care much what happened to them in the end.

However, if you're reading this for a well-researched, incisive, and refreshingly politically incorrect discussion of population control, you won't be disappointed.

[Tina Siegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

God, I love Lionel Shriver! She tackles difficult, uncomfortable subjects honestly and head on and somehow manages to be sympathetic but not sentimental about it. I love how brave she is. I also adore that black, black humour of hers. I did find a few of the characters grating in this one, and the structure wasn't as solid as it could have been. I also found the ending hard to swallow. Otherwise, fantastic. Read it!

[Mr_g_stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun enough read. If, like me, you think that most of humanity's problems can be laid at the feet of our inability to control our population, and if, like me, you think that famines, wars, and plagues are just the earth trying to make corrections for a virus that is out of control... then this book might be for you.

[Neo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lionel Shriver masters dialogue and believable characters. She somehow divulges small merits in the most unlikeable of characters. The subject matter is awfully grim, yet the author splatters the chapters with something to laugh out loud at. I did find myself by the end of the book wanting to HAVE read it rather than be reading it, hence just 3 stars, but then it still managed to surprise me.

[Terra · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'autrice dice che questo, tra i suoi, è il libro prediletto. Avendone letti altri due, dei suoi, posso dichiararmi in disaccordo. Kevin e il Post birthday li ho adorati, questo mi è solo piaciuto. La torsione dei dati epidemiologici e demografici delinea mondi tanto diversi quanto sono diversi i protagonisti, che pure sono inseparabili: ed è tutto qui.

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read it so you don't have to......selfless to the end.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Still) one of my less-favorite Shriver novels. But not because its a bad book (it's not!), I just find the setting and the topic less interesting.

[Adam Burnett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even for a Lionel Shriver novel, this entry is particularly affected and mean-spirited, although still a gleeful read for her capacity to say the unsayable. A satire on overpopulation about betrodden international NGO workers in Africa developing a plan to harness AIDS to wipe out a significant portion of humanity, written at the height of the AIDS pandemic? Bold and brave are words I ascribe to Shriver and they are not misplaced here.

Indulging whole hog on cynicism, Shriver bungles an opportunity to go beyond the surface to mine the calamity of overpopulation for what feels like narrative distractions, including a ghost character that constantly breaks their own contrived narrative rules. The premise and set up are brilliant but the novel quickly loses steam in not knowing what kind of satire it wants to be, and there’s nothing more devastating than satire that fails.

Although it took me a month to slog through, I stuck with it because I’m committed to Shriver’s creative bravery; artistic turns of this kind were always rare but nearly extinct in the current moment when dangerous art is increasingly policed, censored, and snuffed out. Thank goodness Shriver, and a few like her, are still out there making trouble that complicates the conversation rather than nullify it.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t remember the teacher or the class, but I remember being thoroughly frightened by the name Mathlus and the difference between arithmetic and geometric progressions. Might have been math; might have been social studies. My unease ranked right up there with the “Duck and Cover” lessons during the Cold War. Over the years these nightmares gradually subsided and were replaced more recently with the fact my species has been skipping along toward the climate tipping point, the next great age of extinctions (including our pesky pollinators,) the plasticization of the oceans and our food, the placement of our nuclear self-destruct buttons in the hands of two-year olds, and on and on. Now Schriver has reminded me again of Malthus. Carefully researched. Craftily embedded in a dark comedy. Creatively well-spoken to keep me turning pages (or rather tapping the screen) even when I kept telling myself, “Turn it off! Take a walk in the park! Start over watching Friends from the beginning one more time.” Yet, not unlike her villainous realist, I kept going, counted it a blessing I am too old to see all that much of the impending disasters. Another victory for good writing.

[Di · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading this 1994 book after the Covid pandemic, I found the bits about HIV/AIDS research fascinating. Guess what? Just as happened with the Covid hoo-ha (remember Prof Neil Ferguson's doomsday projection?), it was Imperial College London that grossly over-predicted AIDS deaths. As usual, Shriver did serious research for this novel. And the story is entertaining too. The gripers in this comments forum just demonstrate they don't 'get' Lionel Shriver. She doesn't appeal to softies - all her books are for those who like a tough read. She doesn't create lovable characters. One drawback of her approach, I will admit, is that because she uses her characters to express a variety of views on a topic, the storytelling can sometimes be rather dry. The Mandibles is a case in point - all the characters offering different views on the economy can seem rather artificial. I liked that book better on a second reading. Shriver's books often repay a second reading.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd but interesting novel

For fans of Lionel Shriver, this is a must read. You can see elements of many of her other novels in this book, and the author says it's one of her favourites. For people new to the author, this is not her best work. Read We Need To Talk About Kevin or So Much For That instead.

I can see why. This book tackles taboo subjects like overpopulation from an interesting angle, that of the girlfriend of a man planning to cull two billion people. The relationship between them (and his dead ex-girlfriend) is the main focus of the book.

This is not a perfect novel. I found it difficult to believe in Calvin's schemes due to a lack of detail. The story takes a long time to get going and resolves too quickly. But an ambitious novel, imperfectly executed, is still more interesting than one that never ventures out of safe territory.

[Han Whiteoak · Rating 4 out of 5]

For fans of Lionel Shriver, this is a must read. You can see elements of many of her other novels in this book, and the author says it's one of her favourites. For people new to the author, this is not her best work. Read We Need To Talk About Kevin or So Much For That instead.

I can see why Shriver is fond of this book. It tackles the taboo subject of overpopulation from an interesting angle, that of the girlfriend of a man planning to cull two billion people. The relationship between them (and his dead ex-girlfriend) is the main focus of the book.

This is not a perfect novel. I found it difficult to believe in Calvin's schemes due to a lack of detail. The story takes a long time to get going and resolves too quickly. But an ambitious novel, imperfectly executed, is still more interesting than one that never ventures out of safe territory.

[Karen Griffin · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of my favourite authors for her superb writing and acerbic wit, I just couldn’t get into this book. I tried! Many times. Interesting topic upon which I sure needed educating. Writing very clever in places but those brilliantly constructed sentences were rare and interspersed by long indulgent monologues given by characters I couldn’t invest in. The infamous Shriver wit clearly exterminated along with the ‘dead or alive’ Panga.

This is only the second book I have ever failed to finish. Ever.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, only because I was severely disappointed in the ending. It's interesting that this book is written in 1994, and here in 2019 our countries are overwhelmed with third world migrants destroying our future. The story is intensely interesting and of course many of us fantasize about abrupt population reduction. It was fascinating to read about characters who understand this, but with their own quirks and vices. Great story, pathological altruism won out.