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Big Brother: A Novel
Author:
Shriver, Lionel
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3569
Print Run: 50000
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ISBN-13: 9780061458576
LCCN: BD13038007
Imprint: Harper
Publisher: HarperCollins
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Pub Date: 06/04/2013
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $26.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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373 p. ; 24 cm.
H 9",
W 6",
D 1.21",
1.28 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Fiction Core Collection, 17th ed.
Fiction Core Collection, 18th ed.
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Awards:
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BookPage Best Books
Kirkus Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Kirkus Reviews
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TIPS Subjects:
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Domestic Fiction
Humorous Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce
FICTION / Family Life / Siblings
FICTION / Literary
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LC Subjects:
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Brothers and sisters, Fiction
Domestic fiction
Humorous fiction
Marriage, Fiction
Obesity, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Domestic fiction
Humorous fiction
Marriage, Fiction
Obesity, Fiction
Siblings, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 02/01/2013 |
| Pandora doesn't open a box, but a can of worms when her older brother, hundreds of pounds heavier than she remembers, buries himself in her and her family's life, coaxing Pandora's stepson to drop out of school and ruining her husband's handiwork. 384pp., 50K, Auth res: London; Brooklyn, NY |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Kirkus Reviews | 04/01/2013 |
| A woman is at a loss to control her morbidly obese brother in the latest feat of unflinching social observation from Shriver (The New Republic, 2012, etc.). Pandora, the narrator of this smartly turned novel, is a happily settled 40-something living in a just-so Iowa home with her husband and two stepchildren and running a successful business manufacturing custom dolls that parrot the recipient's pet phrases. Her brother, Edison, is a New York jazz pianist who's hit the skids, and when he calls hoping to visit for a while, she's happy to assist. But she's aghast to discover he's ballooned from a trim 163 to nearly 400 pounds. Edison can be a pretentious blowhard to start with, and his weight makes him an even more exasperating houseguest, clearing out the pantry, breaking furniture and driving a wedge in Pandora's marriage. So Pandora concocts a scheme: She'll move out to live with Edison while monitoring his crash diet of protein-powder drinks. The book is largely about weight and America's obesity epidemic; Shriver writes thoughtfully about our diets and how our struggle to find an identity tends to lead us toward the fridge, and she describes our fleshy flaws with a candor that marks much of her fiction. But the book truly shines as a study of family relationships. As Pandora spends a year as Edison's cheerleader, drill sergeant and caregiver, Shriver reveals the complex push and pull between siblings and has some wise and troubling things to say about guilt, responsibility and how what can seem like tough love is actually overindulgence. The story's arc flirts with a cheeriness that's unusual for her, but a twist ending reassures us this is indeed a Shriver novel and that our certitude is just another human foible. A masterful, page-turning study of complex relationships among our bodies, our minds and our families. 384pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 06/01/2013 |
| How far would you go to rescue a sibling hurtling down the path to self-destruction? That's the question Lionel Shriver poses in this bighearted novel about a sister's battle to curb her brother's epic overeating--a story that challenges some of our facile assumptions about weight, body image and the sometimes complicated daily encounter with one of life's most mundane and sublime activities. When down-on-his-luck jazz pianist Edison Appaloosa rolls into baggage claim at the Cedar Rapids Airport in an extra-wide wheelchair, his younger sister Pandora Halfdanarson is left nearly speechless. In the four years since she's last seen him he's added more than 200 pounds, a weight gain so massive he's lost three inches of height. Pandora and Edison share the burden of a difficult past, as children of a father who once starred in a now long-forgotten television drama that blurred the boundary between real life and fantasy for both of them. Edison settles in for an extended visit. From the first, his presence provokes conflict with Pandora's husband, an obsessive cyclist and "nutritional Nazi" who gazes in horror on Edison's feats of consumption. On the eve of her brother's departure from Iowa, Pandora, the creator of a wildly successful line of snarky customized pull-string dolls called Baby Monotonous, decides to abandon her family and move into an apartment with Edison to manage his radical, nearly life-threatening weight loss program. The second half of the novel traces the rocky course of that experiment. As Edison's weight falls, his self-esteem rises, but Pandora, who has her own tangled relationship with food, must also struggle with the toll her choice of brother over husband and teenage stepchildren exacts on her family. Making effective use of the intimate, almost claustrophobic, settings of her novel, Shriver consistently delivers whip-smart, often witty dialogue and pungent character insights that add powerful momentum to what, at its heart, remains a simple story. Only a writer of Shriver's talent and courage would attempt a denouement as daring as the one that plays out over the novel's final 15 pages. She succeeds by creating something that does much more than tie up plot threads and usher her characters off the stage. Instead, she makes us appreciate anew how profound the emotional and psychological issues of family and food are, deepening our empathy along with our admiration for the unquestionable skill she displays in doing it. 384pg. BOOKPAGE, c2013. |
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| Booklist | 04/01/2013 |
| Shriver continues her fictional inquiry into the timely topic of obesity, launched in the The New Republic (2012), with a novel about how weight problems can alter the dynamics of a family in devastating ways. Pandora is a successful entrepreneur living in Iowa with her uptight husband, Fletcher. Pandora's brother, Edison, is a once-popular jazz pianist in New York who can no longer pay his rent. Against Fletcher's wishes, Pandora sends Edison a plane ticket to Iowa; when he arrives, she almost doesn't recognize him owing to the "hundreds more pounds" he carries than when she last saw him. Edison's slovenly habits disgust Fletcher, a "nutritional Nazi," so when Pandora commits to helping Edison lose all those pounds, the siblings move to an apartment nearby. Shriver creates suspense by adroitly involving the reader in Pandora's effort to help her brother, and as in previous novels, she injects an unexpected twist at the end, which some readers may find annoying rather than clever. Nevertheless, Shriver brilliantly explores the strength of sibling bonds versus the often more fragile ties of marriage. Donovan, Deborah. 384p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2013. |
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| Library Journal | 04/15/2013 |
| Pandora hasn't seen her older brother, Edison, a hip New York jazz musician, in four years. When she picks him up at an Iowa airport, he gives her the shock of her life: Edison has gained over 200 pounds and is unrecognizable. His visit is an intrusion into Pandora's home, which she shares with her fitness-freak husband, Fletcher, and her two adopted children. National Book Award finalist and New York Times best-selling novelist Shriver (So Much for That; We Need To Talk About Kevin) is known for her unstinting scrutiny of timely topics. Now she confronts the social but also painfully private issue of obesity through sibling relationships and marriage. However, the novel is essentially about fat--the nature of our relationship to food, why we overeat, and whether crash diets really work. As Fletcher becomes incensed with his brother-in-law's appalling eating habits, slovenly appearance, and careless behavior, he gives Pandora an ultimatum: it's him or me. VERDICT Brilliantly imagined, beautifully written, and superbly entertaining, Shriver's novel confronts readers with the decisive question: can we save our loved ones from themselves? A must-read for Shriver fans, this novel will win over new readers as well. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 12/9/12.]. Lisa Block, Atlanta. 384p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 12/10/2012 |
| Pandora is having trouble with husband Fletcher, a master carpenter who's become a rigid health nut and rejects her fabulous cooking. Then her brother Edison arrives, having gained hundreds of pounds. He promptly wreaks havoc, cooking gargantuan meals, destroying some of Fletcher's work, and encouraging Pandora's stepson to drop out of high school. When Fletcher tells Pandora that she must choose between him and Edison, she opts for her brother, whom she feels she must save from eating himself to death. The author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, so good at tackling social issues within the context of family, should handle the national obesity epidemic with aplomb. With a 50,000-copy first printing-not as big as might be expected, perhaps because her recent The New Republic, a resurrected novel, didn't entirely work, but I trust her talent. 384p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2012. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 03/11/2013 |
| Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin) returns to the family in this intelligent meditation on food, guilt, and the real (and imagined) debts we owe the ones we love. Ex-caterer Pandora has made it big with a custom doll company that creates personal likenesses with pull-string, sometimes crude, catch phrases. The dolls speak to the condition of these characters--all trapped in destructive relationships with food (and each other): Pandora cooks to show love, to the delight of her compulsively fit husband Fletcher, whose refusal to eat diary or vary from his biking routine are the outward manifestation of his remove. Pandora's brother Edison eats to ease the pain of a stalled music career and broken marriage. And both live somewhat uncomfortably in the shadow of their father's TV fame. In Big Brother, nothing reveals character more scathingly than food. Early in the book, the nearly 400-pound Edison arrives--waddling through an Iowa airport with a "ground eating galumph"--a man transformed in the four years since his sister last saw him. He brings the novel energy as well as an occasionally unpalatable maudlin drama. But Pandora will risk everything, including her own health, to save him. If this devotion and Pandora's increasing success with Edison's diet plan sometimes seem chirpily false, a late reveal provides devastating justification. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, Inkwell Management. (June). 373p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2013. |
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9780061458576,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 06/30/2013 |
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