So Much For That – new novel from Orange Prize winning author Lionel Shriver.

As we have come to expect from Lionel Shriver, So Much For That is unflinching and powerful. Reminiscent of  Orange Prize winning We Need To Talk About Kevin in its blistering honesty and fearless handling of painful subjects, this is a very fine book indeed. Perhaps her finest: I’m a fan of Kevin, but this definitely gives it a run for its money.

First and foremost – this isn’t for the faint hearted. If you like it light and fluffy, you might want to try something else (you might want to try another blog for your reviews, too, because there isn’t much of that description around here). Almost as soon as you’ve learned the character’s names, this book reads you. It’s a world we can all relate to, somehow, and a creepy kind of recognition and fear descends. I’m afraid this book will rip your heart out. Don’t worry: it’s worth it.

Shep Knacker, tired and disillusioned, has a dream of an Afterlife (“There’s something especially terrible about being told over and over that you have the most wonderful life on earth and it doesn’t get any better and it’s still shit.”). He has saved all his life for retirement on an exotic island where his hard earned American dollars will buy him comfort for the rest of his life. His wife, Glynis, has vetoed the plan too many times; this time he’s going, with or without her. He makes his announcement, she makes one of her own; she has a rare and aggressive form of cancer.  Thus Shep finds himself back at work on Monday morning, toiling for the handyman company he built and then sold to a megalomaniac employee who he now has to work for – and grovel to for time off to see his wife through the horrors of her treatment.

Rapidly, Shep’s life savings, his Afterlife, are haemorrhaged away as illness, and the crippling emotional and financial ramifications of it, batter him. Shep finds himself, the man who has always met everyone’s needs, having to count the pennies and weigh up, literally, what life is worth.  Giving a scathing account of the American health insurance industry that made me guiltily glad of the NHS, the book hurtles towards a terrifying unknown where Glynis will still be ill and the money will be gone.

Shep and Glynis are aided by a stellar cast of characters – telling you too much about them might dilute your discovery of them – but suffice to say they’re an excellently drawn bunch. The politically enraged, the selfish, the devout- they are all important and all chronic in their own way. Shriver deftly reaches into the roots of The American Dream and tears it out of the ground. It is left to sprawl without mercy as the characters become first consumed with the unfairness of it all and later serene with acceptance, with both beautiful and devastating consequences.

The book is vibrant, ruthless, and in a few precious moments laugh out loud funny.  Of course it’s political, but so intrinsically human is it that it doesn’t bark orders. It tears the world apart and then shakily puts it back together. It’s a complete experience, and it had me from page one to end.

Reviewed by Sara.