Lionel Shriver - Property

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Lionel Shriver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

The Standing Chandelier was first published in 2017

The Self-Seeding Sycamore was originally written for short story collection Reader, I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier and published by The Borough Press

The Royal Male was first published in the Telegraph

Exchange Rates and Negative Equity were first published in The Times

Kilifi Creek was first published in the New Yorker

Repossession was first published in the Guardian

Vermin was first published in Stylist

Paradise to Perdition was first published in Raffles Hotels & Resorts Magazine

Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018

Jacket illustration © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This collection of short stories is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008265250

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008265243

Version: 2018-07-12

‘Phenomenal … Shriver has the gift for making one instantly curious, entertained, involved and ready to move in – no matter what the property’

Observer

‘Shriver’s intellect and talent, her political convictions and her impressive confidence are all on display … assertive, frequently funny and altogether satisfying … her confident grasp of the material and her natural gifts as a storyteller will keep you in her spell and leave you, at the end, slightly altered … persuasive and richly entertaining’

New York Times

‘Genius’

Stylist

‘Whip-smart … Crisp, conversational and convincingly true to life, Shriver’s stories are a treat’

Daily Mail

‘Shriver remains a formidably sharp writer, one of the best we have’

Evening Standard

‘All Shriver’s stories are satisfying. I exhaled a little triumphant “Ha!” at the end of each one … Shriver is brilliant’

The Times

‘Shriver is the master of the neat twist’

Daily Express

‘Shriver is at her best here, an acerbic comedian, Dickensian in style, whose vibrant characters are best seen in dramatic action and dialogue’

Financial Times

‘At her best, she takes the familiar and mundane and turns it into something surprising and strange’

Sunday Express S Magazine

‘A pugnacious, brilliantly articulate, hilarious collection’

iNews

‘Wry and nimble … richly detailed … Shriver’s stories will make readers laugh when they feel they shouldn’t, and the uniting theme of houses and humans works exceedingly well, turning up new wrinkles with each successive story’

Publishers Weekly

TO

BERGER:

one of the three people who make

my life worth living.

I bought a wood [ … ]. It is not a large wood—it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected, blast it, by a public footpath. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will vary in horror, this very important question: What is the effect of property upon the character? [ … ]

If you own things, what’s their effect on you? What’s the effect on me of my wood?

In the first place, it makes me feel heavy. [ … ]

In the second place, it makes me feel it ought to be larger.

—E. M. FORSTER, “My Wood”

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Property

Dedication

Epigraph

The Standing Chandelier: A Novella

The Self-Seeding Sycamore

Domestic Terrorism

The Royal Male

Exchange Rates

Kilifi Creek

Repossession

The ChapStick

Negative Equity

Vermin

Paradise to Perdition

The Subletter: A Novella

About the Author

Also by Lionel Shriver

About the Publisher

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