The Post-birthday World - Lionel Shriver

The protagonist of The Post Birthday World is Irina. She is half-Russian, half-American and a former translator working as a moderately successfully children's book author. She is a long term relationship with Lawrence, who works in 'nation building' (??) and finds himself embroiled in real-life political events. He is intelligent but predictable. Through a former work colleague of Irina they make friends with a hard-living, handsome, formerly womanising celebrity snooker player named Ramsey. Ramsey has the none too auspicious notoriety of always coming runner up in major competitions. It becomes a habit that the couple invite Ramsey out for a meal to ...  Read the complete review

If you have read my Top Ten Reads then you will know that one of my favourite books of all time is "We Need to Talk About Kevin." I couldn't stop thinking about it for a while after such is the impact it had on me. It was a massive disappointment when I read Shriver's second novel, "Double Fault " as all of the worst aspects of "We Need To Talk About Kevin " (Shriver tends to waffle on about something for pages at a time, and instead of being interesting I always found myself skimming them to get back to the story) were present but ten times worse and the story just didn't live up to the excitement of her first. I have to say ...  Read the complete review