Lionel Shriver - The Mandibles - A Family, 2029–2047

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Lionel Shriver 2016

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Nick Fielding/Alamy (banknote, front); Shutterstock.com (all other images)

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

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel 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.

Source ISBN: 9780007560776

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007560769

Version: 2020-04-03

‘ The Mandibles is so dazzlingly good that it might even mean Lionel Shriver won’t be described as “best-known for We Need To Talk About Kevin ” for the rest of her career’

Reader’s Digest

‘As ever, Shriver cuts close to the bone! … Distinctly chilling’

Independent

‘A tale that fizzes with ideas and jokes … the comedy is pitch black’

The Times

‘All too chillingly plausible … a profoundly frightening portrait of how quickly the agreed rules of society can fall apart without money to grease the wheels’

Observer

‘Shriver is fast becoming the go-to novelist for some of the big issues of the day … breezy, mordantly comic … if the test of a futuristic novel is its eerie proximity to the present, this passes with flying colours’

Daily Mail

‘A powerful work investigating the fragility of the financial world. Prescient, imaginative and funny, it also asks deep questions’

Economist

‘Impressively sweeping … Shriver’s intelligence, mordant humour and vicious leaps of imagination all combine to make this a novel that is as unsettling as it is entertaining in its portrait of the cataclysmic unravelling of the American dream’

Financial Times

‘A sharp social eye and a blistering comic streak … her focus on nailing down the economic nitty-gritty of her plot is only one piece of the great, disconcerting fun she has in sending the world as we know it so vividly to hell’

New Yorker

‘Hilarious and brilliant … scary in the best possible way’

Elle

‘A provocative and very funny page-turner’

Wall Street Journal

‘Shriver really makes you think about the nature of money … By the end, The Mandibles had got under my skin’

Evening Standard

‘The stuff of nightmares … Shriver cleverly balances tragedy with black comedy’

Sunday Express

‘It’s scaring the hell out of me’

TRACY CHEVALIER

‘Shriver is as brilliant, funny and incisive as ever’

Woman and Home

‘A scary, depressing and convincing horror story, akin to reading about teetering on the edge of a precipice while actually teetering on the edge of a precipice’

Spectator

‘Insightful and darkly funny’

Good Housekeeping

‘Her verve and ambition are impressive … Few writers since William Gaddis in his brilliant JR have had the chutzpah to take on America’s particular money madness’

Mail on Sunday

‘A gripping family saga’

Daily Telegraph

‘By turns blackly funny and deeply unsettling’

Independent

‘Shriver writes with brio and intellectual zest. She is fiercely intelligent, but she has the qualities and virtues of the classical novelist. The ideas are fascinating, and the characters are thoroughly imagined and convincing … her gloomy vision is so brilliantly depicted that her novel is wonderfully enjoyable. If we are going to hell in a handcart, she makes the journey great fun’

Scotsman

‘Imaginative’

Sunday Times

‘Dystopian fable punctuated by comedy so dark it practically disappears into the shadows … brilliantly unforgiving’

The Times

‘A gleeful nightmare, it made me snort with laughter even as I was shuddering’

SARAH WATERS, Guardian

‘Brilliant satire … frankly terrifying’

SARAH CHURCHWELL, Guardian

‘Searing … establishes her firmly as the Cassandra of American letters … I don’t remember the last time a novel held me so enduringly in its grip’

New York Times

‘The energy of Shriver’s style counteracts the remorselessness of her vision’

JANE SMILEY, Guardian

TO BRADFORD HALL WILLIAMS.

Although you had little time for fiction,

you’d have liked this book.

Who would have imagined that a cantankerous

misanthrope would be so fiercely missed?

Collapse is a sudden, involuntary and chaotic form of simplification.

—James Rickards, Currency Wars

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

Dedication

Epigraph

2029

Chapter One: Gray Water

Chapter Two: Karmic Clumping

Chapter Three: Waiting for the Dough

Chapter Four: Good Evening, Fellow Americans

Chapter Five: The Chattering Classes

Chapter Six: Search and Seizure

Chapter Seven: The Warrior Queen Arrives in Carroll Gardens

Chapter Eight: The Joys of Being Indispensable

Chapter Nine: Foul Matters

Chapter Ten: Setbacks Never Bring Out the Best in People

Chapter Eleven: Badder Bitter Gutter

Chapter Twelve: Agency, Reward, and Sacrifice

Chapter Thirteen: Karmic Clumping II

Chapter Fourteen: A Complex System Enters Disequilibrium

2047

Chapter One: Getting with the Program

Chapter Two: So Tonight We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 2047

Chapter Three: Return of the Somethingness: Shooting Somebody, Going Somewhere Else, or Both

Chapter Four: Singin’ This’ll Be the Day That I Die

Chapter Five: Who Wants to Live in a Utopia Anyway

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Lionel Shriver

About the Publisher