The Post-Birthday World (Hardcover)

by Lionel Shriver (Author)
Key Phrases: crimson traveler, snooker loopy, snooker fan, Ramsey Acton, Anorak Man, Blue Sky (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The smallest details of staid coupledom duel it out with a lusty alternate reality that begins when a woman passes up an opportunity to cheat on her longtime boyfriend in Shriver's latest (after the Orange Prize–winning We Need to Talk About Kevin). Irina McGovern, a children's book illustrator in London, lives in comfortable familiarity with husband-in-everything-but-marriage-certificate Lawrence Trainer, and every summer the two have dinner with their friend, the professional snooker player Ramsey Acton, to celebrate Ramsey's birthday. One year, following Ramsey's divorce and while terrorism specialist "think tank wonk" Lawrence is in Sarajevo on business, Irina and Ramsey have dinner, and after cocktails and a spot of hash, Irina is tempted to kiss Ramsey. From this near-smooch, Shriver leads readers on a two-pronged narrative: one consisting of what Irina imagines would have happened if she had given in to temptation, the other showing Irina staying with Lawrence while fantasizing about Ramsey. With Jamesian patience, Shriver explores snooker tournaments and terrorism conferences, passionate lovemaking and passionless sex, and teases out her themes of ambition, self-recrimination and longing. The result is an impressive if exhausting novel. (Mar.)
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From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Mameve Medwed

Lionel Shriver's wonderful new novel, her latest since the prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin, creates parallel universes that indulge all our what-if speculations. Spared any fork-in-the-road choices, Irina McGovern, a children's book illustrator, can have her beefcake and eat it too. A professional, independent woman not enamored of feminist bumper stickers, Irina admits, "The only thing I can't live without is a man." In this case, Shriver grants her two.

The first, Lawrence Trainer, a sweetly geeky terrorism expert, offers tranquil domesticity; Irina fixes nightly bowls of popcorn while they watch BBC snooker tournaments, cooks voluptuous if economical meals and enjoys reliable same-side-of-the-bed, same-position sex. Though not officially married, so entrenched are the pair they might as well be. "Some friends regarded Irina-and-Lawrence as a factual matter," Shriver writes, "like the existence of France."

For more than nine years, "monogamy had been effortless" -- until the second man turns up. He's Ramsey Acton, dazzling celebrity snooker champion and husband of Irina's collaborator, Jude. Every year on Ramsey's birthday, Irina and Lawrence dine out with Ramsey and Jude. One July, Lawrence, away on business, encourages Irina to meet Ramsey, newly divorced, for the traditional birthday ritual. After four sakes, a deluxe platter of sashimi, cognac and a joint, Irina watches Ramsey play snooker and thinks, "If Ramsey didn't kiss her, she was going to die."

The rest of the story pivots on this will-they-or-won't-they as the novel splits into alternating chapters; in one, they kiss; in another, she turns away. Who is Irina's Mr. Right? In excessive, often obsessive, detail, Shriver explores Irina's life with each candidate through the quotidian and across a larger political and social landscape that includes Bosnia, the death of Princess Diana and 9/11. One chapter shows Irina as too cocooned in her love nest to notice outside events; its alternate has her relate the fall of the Twin Towers to her own predicament: "Today of all days it should have been possible to weep the whole day through, but it wasn't. The fact that she had sobbed for whole evenings at a go over the loss of one boyfriend yet now found it too demanding to whimper over the loss of multitudes for more than two or three minutes was just one of those ugly facts about herself that Irina would have to live with."

Shriver is a crackerjack chronicler of the lives of the self-absorbed; she understands the ties that bind and the ones that sunder. Studying Ramsey's depleted rooms after his divorce, Irina notes, "For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep the past itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it."

Shriver is equally clever at shifting around polar opposites and mirror images. Irina's book is a success; Irina's book is a failure. Ramsey's career takes off; it hits the skids. Lawrence is always loyal -- or is he? Though Ramsey can be difficult, earthmoving sex more than compensates. Soon enough, even that changes. No choice is perfect; no soulmate seizes center stage.

While the focus stays on Irina and her two men, the author serves up side dishes of politics, snooker lore and menu plans. Culinary metaphors abound: Ramsey's skin is "like one of those complex reduction sauces you get in upscale restaurants . . . and you can never quite figure out what's in it." Sentences sparkle with such mouth-watering descriptions of food that you'll want to run to the refrigerator. Lovely small portraits of Irina's larger-than-life Russian mother, her sister Tatyana and Ramsey's idiosyncratic competitors charm and enlighten.

As Irina learns that no matter what kind of man a woman picks, "she'll wonder if she wouldn't rather have the other," the accretion of details, the parsing of characters' angst, the little moments blown into big can seem like so much navel-gazing. However fascinating, the microscopic analysis of the two objects of Irina's affection can also be wearying. Nevertheless, the rewards for sticking with these 500-plus pages are as delicious as one of Irina's feasts.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1 edition (March 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061187844
• ISBN-13: 978-0061187841
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #359,126 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great Premise With Unlikable Results, March 21, 2007

By	Gregory Baird (Morristown, NJ) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Being a fan of Lionel Shriver's previous novel, "We Need to Talk About Kevin", I was thrilled to find that she had a new novel out. I was even more intrigued by the novel's beguiling plot: Irina McGovern, a forty-something ex-pat living in London, finds herself at a crossroads, and the novel proceeds in two separate directions. Irina has been in an almost ten year relationship with Lawrence Trainer that has settled into a comfortable if stultifying groove. He's sturdy, reliable, intelligent, and reasonably attractive, but he's also stubborn, judgmental, strict, and their relationship has become exceptionally passionless. He won't even marry Irina because he's against marriage. Enter Ramsey Acton, a beguiling pro Snooker player that is Lawrence's polar opposite: smoldering to Lawrence's blandness, passionate to Lawrence's stoicism, daring where Lawrence is cautious. And here lies the predicament that Irina finds herself in after being left alone with Ramsey for his annual birthday dinner: give in to fiery, passionate temptation ... or remain loyal to the tried-and-true life she has grown accustomed to.

Thus, in storyline 'A' Irina gives in to temptation and leaves Lawrence for Ramsey, while in storyline 'B' she takes smug satisfaction in her own strength of character and loyalty. For a while the back and forth is quite enchanting and clever, and the reader delights in Shriver's carefully concocted parallel structure. But by page 300 those very same parallels that were intriguing and smart become oppressive to the plot and render it hopelessly predictable. If something happens in storyline A you can rely on its counterpoint occuring in B: if Irina has to act as a mediator during a public spat in A, she will be the one causing the scene in B; if she receives a special something in A she will be denied it in B; and so on until the novel's ultimate counterpoint that I cannot reveal here. What was so exciting, at least to me, about the premise of the book was the concept of exploring two different scenarios, and Shriver squanders the opportunity to explore what might have been by slavishly adhering to form -- creating two stories that move in parallel lines instead of diverging ones. Suddenly an otherwise intelligent novel becomes dull and plodding, and the ultimate disappointment is that both A and B's endings are also entirely predictable since both are foreshadowed earlier on. One would have easily been touching and heartfelt if you hadn't been cued to see it coming, and the other might have been shocking if it hadn't been portended earlier on.

Shriver also has a periodic way of getting sidetracked by politics in her novel, which spans roughly fifteen years starting in the 1990s and taking us to the post-9/11 era. They are distracting, and woefully out of place. She takes swipes at Bill Clinton for failing to catch Osama Bin Laden and potshots at Hillary for being ambitious. She decries Britain's National Healthcare system as a hackneyed operation doomed to failure. She even contrives to have all of her characters in Manhattan on the eve of 9/11 for no real reason, since ultimately the atrocity will have very little to do with the plot except to serve Shriver's purpose in analogies for the remainder of the novel -- which is ironic because one character opines that to reduce the scope of that tragedy to such (comparatively) trivial matters is "surely a vain misappropriation of national tragedy". But that didn't stop Shriver from doing it anyway. The aforementioned political asides feel disjointed and don't belong in the plotline, and ultimately neither did 9/11. Had it ultimately had more to do with the plot it would be fine, but it just pops in and then out again as suddenly as it happened. It's a shame that it is becoming commonplace for such a tragic event to be used as a go-to plot device in novels, and while Shriver's depiction of the day is about a million times better -- and more accurate -- than the shockingly offensive turn Claire Messud gave it in last year's "The Emperor's Children", it still feels like a cheap trick.

But what I really disliked about 'The Post-Birthday World" in the end was Shriver's sadistic treatment of Irina. In both storylines she is doomed to apologize for other people's messes in addition to hers, to accept a grotesquely unfair portion of the blame for every misdeed committed, and to be misused and taken advantage of. It comes down to the men in her life. Ramsey is a brash lush whose raging temper has him emotionally abusing Irina from the beginning of their relationship. Lawrence is such an unrelentingly arrogant, narcissictic jerk that he smothers Irina at every turn. What you would really like is for her to toss them both on the street and tell them to sod off, but Shriver seems more interested in antagonizing Irina than in letting her off the hook even a little bit.

Book clubs would have a field day with this novel because it certainly leaves itself open for debate, but I can't imagine really imagine recommending it to anyone looking for a pleasurable read. For that, I would point them to Shriver's previous effort: "We Need to Talk About Kevin". In that book, her protagonist had some cause to be put through the wringer, but it just feels degrading to watch Irina sink lower and lower.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unique Narrative - And It Works!, March 26, 2007

By	Mary Lins (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Lionel Shriver's new novel, "The Post-Birthday World" can be compared to the film "Sliding Doors" in that it follows protagonist Irina McGovern down two possible life's paths. Irina is a children's illustrator happily living in London with her long-time partner, Lawrence. On night, after too many drinks and a few tokes, she has an overwhelming urge to kiss an acquaintance, Ramsey, who happens to be a famous snooker player. For the rest of the novel, we are treated to alternate realities; one chapter where she has given in to her desire to kiss Ramsey and the resulting impact on her life and her relationship, and the next chapter where she has resisted temptation and those results on her life.

The alternate realities/story lines are well written, and cunningly related to each other and often over-lapping. Most interesting is the way Shriver builds the character of Lawrence and how differently he is meant to be perceived by the reader in each scenario; the Lawrence that Irina is faithful to is much less likeable that poor cuckolded Lawrence.

I am a huge fan of "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and Shriver's pitch-perfect use of the unreliable narrator. In "The Post-Birthday World" Shriver's prose is a real treat, reminiscent of the days when gifted writers took the time and effort to set a scene and to lay out a plot that gently urged the reader to turn "just one more page".

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A compelling look at unlikeable characters, March 18, 2007

By	M. Nunn (New York City) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An interesting (if not new) premise, easy to read prose, and the author's ability to articulate and individualize to her protaganist a common discussion many women have with themselves (and each other) keep the reader hooked until the last page of The Post Birthday World.

That discussion- whether a calm, stable, yet less than erotically fulfilling relationship is better than a volatile yet sexually fulfilling one is explored here by the author using alternating chapters that show "Irina's" life at particular places-first if she leaves her long-term partner after kissing another man, and then if she remains after deciding not to kiss him.

To the author's credit, she avoids many cliches and stereotypes associated with the "stable but boring" man and the "sexy but unpredictable" man, and avoids moralizing about fidelity. Although we are only privy to Irina's interior thoughts, Shriver does an excellent job of creating fully-fleshed out characters- not only with Irina and her two men- Lawrence and Ramsey, but with some of the more minor characters as well, such as Irina's mother and sister, and Ramsey's ex-wife.

Irina's feelings are depicted realistically. Any woman who has been in love with a man she knew was probably not good for her, but couldn't help herself, and/or complacent and mostly content, if not completely satisfied with another will empathize with Irina's turbulence and soul-searching. Some readers may even find her experience agonizing.

Although I was riveted by this story and couldn't put the book down, I can't say that reading it was very pleasant; in fact I felt a faint hint of indigestion while reading it. I am still trying to sort out if it was because aspects of Irina's experiences hit too close to home at times, or if the strain of mean-spiritness I found to be running through the book really exists there.

Irina presents as a decent, thoughtful, if somewhat insecure woman. Although there were times I wanted to take her and shake her, it was hard to watch all of the emotional punishment and suffering the author heaped upon her. There were emotionally abusive aspects in both of her relationships, and there were points I wished she'd ditch both men and find somebody truly healthy for her. At times I wanted to scream, "There's plenty of fish in the sea Irina- lose these bozos!!"

Then, just as it seemed that in both scenarios, Irina's patience with the particular man was paying off, the author would throw a monkey-wrench into the mix to torture Irina again. Perhaps it would have been more fitting if the heroine had been named "Job."

The ending will sure to keep book discussion boards busy, as it can be interpreted as open-ended. I thought that perhaps at this point the author had tired of toying with Irina and decided to have a go at the reader, instead.

I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those "controversial, love it or hate it" books. I certainly have very mixed feelings about it. It is certain to be provacative and make for some interesting book discussion group get-togethers and water-cooler talk.