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Lionel Shriver

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 Hardcover – Deckle Edge, June 21, 2016

by Lionel Shriver (Author)

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"A provocative and very funny page-turner..."--Wall Street Journal

With dry wit and psychological acuity, this near-future novel explores the aftershocks of an economically devastating U.S. sovereign debt default on four generations of a once-prosperous American family. Down-to-earth and perfectly realistic in scale, this is not an over-the-top Blade Runner tale. It is not science fiction.

In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war that will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Overnight, on the international currency exchange, the “almighty dollar” plummets in value, to be replaced by a new global currency, the “bancor.” In retaliation, the president declares that America will default on its loans. “Deadbeat Nation” being unable to borrow, the government prints money to cover its bills. What little remains to savers is rapidly eaten away by runaway inflation.

The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their ninety-seven-year-old patriarch dies. Once the inheritance turns to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment, but also—as the U.S. economy spirals into dysfunction—the challenge of sheer survival.

Recently affluent, Avery is petulant that she can’t buy olive oil, while her sister, Florence, absorbs strays into her cramped household. An expat author, their aunt, Nollie, returns from abroad at seventy-three to a country that’s unrecognizable. Her brother, Carter, fumes at caring for their demented stepmother, now that an assisted living facility isn’t affordable. Only Florence’s oddball teenage son, Willing, an economics autodidact, will save this formerly august American family from the streets.

The Mandibles is about money. Thus it is necessarily about bitterness, rivalry, and selfishness—but also about surreal generosity, sacrifice, and transformative adaptation to changing circumstances.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper
Publication date

June 21, 2016
Dimensions

6 x 1.29 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0062328247
ISBN-13

978-0062328243
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A provocative and very funny page-turner…” -- Wall Street Journal

“….[A] powerful work...Prescient, imaginative and funny, it also asks deep questions.” -- The Economist

“Hilarious, brilliant new novel...” -- Elle

“Known for tackling big contemporary issues head-on, Shriver deals skilfully here with the implications of economic meltdown. The novel, set in a near-ish future, tells of the plight of the once wealthy Mandible family and the decline of four generations into penury, thieving and prostitution.” -- Financial Times (A Summer Pick of 2016)

“[Shriver has] a sharp social eye and a blistering comic streak, and 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.” -- The New Yorker's Page-Turner Blog

“Shriver has always seemed to be at least a few steps ahead of the rest of us, but her new novel 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 Book Review

“It’s scaring the hell out of me.” -- Tracy Chevalier

The world that the Mandible family must negotiate is evoked in seamless detail… One thing I really like is her coining of made-up slang for her younger generation of characters and her resolutely materialist analysis of what could be coming. -- Jane Smiley, The Guardian

“Distinctly chilling.” -- Independent (UK)

“This is a sharp, smart, snarky satire of every conspiracy theory and hot button political issue ever spun; one that, at first glance, might induce an absurdist chuckle, until one realizes that it is based on an all-too-plausible reality.” -- Booklist (starred review)

From the Back Cover

In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war that will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Overnight, the “almighty dollar” plummets in value, to be replaced by a new global currency, the bancor. In retaliation, the president declares that America will default on its loans. The government prints money to cover its bills. What little real currency remains for savers is eaten away by inflation.

The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable inheritance, once their patriarch dies. When their birthright turns to ash, what began as mere disappointment spirals into the challenge of sheer survival.

In The Mandibles, Lionel Shriver brings the full power of her creative imagination to bear on a topic that seeps into every corner of our lives: money. Using her ability to nail the zeitgeist, droll humor, and psychological insight, Shriver has created an unforgettable and engrossing fictional world.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper; 1st edition (June 21, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062328247
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062328243
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.29 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #400,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,848 in Dystopian Fiction
- #11,439 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #25,706 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
1,096 ratings

Customer reviews

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3 star		11%
2 star		7%
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Top reviews from the United States

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The Buck Stops

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2016

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Lionel Shriver's new novel, "The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047" is captivating, and at the same time a humorous and chilling work of speculative fiction. Early on, one of Shiver's characters, in referencing the works: "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "1984", says: "Plots set in the future are about what we fear in the present. They're not about the future at all." Since this particular character turns out to be extremely wrong about a lot of things, I take this as a wink to the reader that Shriver believes that many of her dire predictions about the economic future of the US may indeed become true. We'll see!

"The Mandibles" begins in 2029 (100 years since the "crash" of 1929). In what is later called "The Great Renunciation", the president (who is a "Lat": of Latin descent), calls for the renunciation all US debt and defaults on all foreign debt. Invoking the International Emergency Powers Act of 1977 (it's real), he calls for all gold to be confiscated. Blame is placed on nebulous "hostile foreign" entities who have tried to replace the dollar with the "bancor". The President, in addition to recalling all gold (including jewelry and dental work) from every citizen, has ordered the military to do a door-to-door search for hoarded gold and for those responsible to be fined and imprisoned. In addition, the US has "reset" all US Treasury bonds to zero and inflation has driven the price of a (scarce) head of cabbage up to $30. Some folks are happy that the "uber-rich" or the 1%-ers are falling like dominoes seeing it as finally a way to erase the vast economic disparities. The US starts printing (now almost worthless) money by the truckload, though with the toilet paper scarcity - well, you can imagine what happens.

The novel revolves around the eponymous Mandible family, founded by wealthy grandfather Douglas Mandible aka "Grand Man". His oldest granddaughter, Florence, lives in Flatbush, NY, with her teen-aged son, Willing (no kidding), and her lover Esteban. Florence is highly educated (Barnard) but can only find work processing cases in a homeless shelter. Her son, Willing, is the only one who seems to grasp what is happening to the economy, but of course, no one listens to him - he's just a kid! Florence's younger sister Avery, a pseudo-psychotherapist, is married to Lowell, a professor of economics at Georgetown. They have three children, Savannah, Goog and Bing (yep, named after search engines). Avery is used to the good life and now finds that she can't even afford olive oil. It's a long way down. Lowell has a particularly difficult time accepting the economic realities that don't match up with his economic theories.

Shriver's fictional future is full of interesting and humorous possibilities: Putin is still in power: dictator of Russia. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for president necessitating the 28th Amendment (requiring the President to be born on American soil) to be nullified. Judge Judy was appointed to the Supreme Court (which made cases much shorter). Also in 2024, the entire infrastructure of the US (electricity, water, The Internet - gasp!) was shut down for three weeks and chaos ensued. China was blamed (no proof ever attained). Journalism is dead - no source can be trusted (I'd say that's already happened). I don't want to give away too many of Shriver's "treats" so that you can savor all the ironies yourself, but one about Mexico and a wall is particularly biting.

Shriver is in her element with her sterling wit, scathing satire, and stunning irony. This is the kind of novel you'll want to talk with people about - so I highly recommend it for any Book Club with nerves of steel, because it's going to stir up some fervent feelings about race, class, money, guns, and trust in the government. It couldn't be coming out at a more auspicious moment in US history!

170 people found this helpful

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Secessionist Nonsense

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2018

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The truest words in this novel, with which the author described a character in it, apply also perfectly to the author: “. . . there was no more blind a zealotry than that of the autodidact . . .” (p. 197). Although a novelist by profession, the author is self-taught in libertarian economics and has used it as the basis for The Mandibles.

New students are often swayed by glib ideologies, like some undergraduates I remember from the 1960s, who briefly flirted with Marxist ideology. Libertarianism, Marxism—it’s all crackpot science. If you want to see the libertarian ideal of a low-tax, small government state without modern infrastructure, schools, or clean drinking water, visit any Third World Country.

A work of speculative fiction, the novel attempts to portray the effects of a cataclysmic national bankruptcy on America in the near future. According to her viewpoint—Lionel Shriver is a pseudonym for Margaret Ann Shriver—the bankruptcy is brought on by liberals, who then institute totalitarianism to cement their rule.

The author’s suggested solution to this existential national crisis: secession. The author, who is from North Carolina, blends seamlessly neo-Confederate nostalgia and the libertarian ideology to visualize a new state, where the characters in the novel find low taxes, virtually no government at all, and freedom—the libertarian ideal realized.

The author makes secession seem all the more attractive, because she thinks that a bankrupt America would have no power to resist, so it would be a peaceful, bloodless secession. The author’s ignorance of history results in her seriously underplaying the potential scope and consequences of destroying the United States.

One would find a better book and a much more accurate guess at how a post-democratic, authoritarian America would look in the novel, It Can’t Happen Here, by America’s first Nobel-Prize-winning novelist, Sinclair Lewis. He shows convincingly how such a dictatorship would come out of the Radical Right, which in his day (1935) was establishing ultra-nationalist, authoritarian states all over Europe and elsewhere. America politics today affirm on a daily basis the truth of Sinclair Lewis’s book and disprove the seriously dangerous book by Shriver.

34 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Edward B. Crutchley

Grim, funny and marvellous

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2017

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The hellish image this book creates is unforgettable. Fortunately its generous dose of humour enables to get past all the expository dialogue, a lot of it on economic matters, needed to condition the reader. The Mandibles are several generations of a dysfunctional family, with a wealthy patriarch who won’t die, experiencing the implosion of the United States and their own fortune. There was the recent Stone Age, when the internet went down. In order to support a Social Security regime that takes up 80% of GDP, and to buy off the Chinese (to whom the United States has even ceded the 01 dialling code), the Latino-led government confiscates everything gold and cancels payments on Treasury Bonds. Among the countless hardships facing the Mandibles, they have to move into the same Brooklyn house, umpteen to a room (the house eventually gets stolen); there is general penury of water, not to mention loo paper (it gets quite gory here). The only breadwinner (not counting her 19-year-old niece who becomes a ‘stimulation therapist’) becomes Florence (mother of the young central figure, Willing); she works in a homeless shelter. Lionel Shriver spices her story with plenty of passing cracks. Chelsea Clinton is a past President, Ed Balls is British PM, IBM stands for Indonesian Business Machines, KFC is . . . Korean, and Judge Judy has been appointed to the Supreme Court! There is a tantalising mention of America’s military intervention in New Zealand being one of its last before standing back when China took over Japan. The Mexicans construct a wall to prevent American immigrants (no country seems to want them). Desperate for work, people drop their salary demands in order to be competitive with bots. Most of the population becomes chipped, with the advantage that they no longer have to file to the IRS because income and expenditures are monitored daily. Numerous other technological advances make an appearance, but nothing seems to make up for the failings of people. But why enjoy such a grim story? The theory of equilibrium extends to our minds: for everything we have and take for granted there exists the lingering nightmare of losing it. This story exploits it marvellously.

36 people found this helpful

Janie U

Big novel which gives a deep, meaningful read - frightening and darkly comic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 10, 2018

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I had bought this book months earlier and I usually love anything written by Lionel Shriver. I think that I held off as I knew that the narrative had a high amount of economic comment (high for a novel anyway!!) and I've got to be in the right mood for this sort of book. Anyhow, the time came that I was up for it!!
Having read the first few pages I wasn't sure why I had delayed so long. This book is great and written in the author's usual, dry and sardonic style.
The novel starts in 2029 after an economic crash in the US which has turned the world upside down. It's really interesting to see the different levels of predictions from the mundane to the global. This book will become even more fascinating to read as we get closer to the actual date (remember all the interest in 1984?).
I love the details - the names of the characters are intriguing, particularly the children (Goog, Bing, Willing, Fifa as examples) and the use of technology is very inventive.
There is something quite eerie when you see a world which is similar to the present day but worse and all the differences are very plausible. It is a frightening to think about the speed of change - imagine a world with no Amazon, no Apple and no Google as they have all gone in this novel.
At times there are some very detailed descriptions of the financial markets which lost me unless I was working really hard with the narrative. It is an essential part of the story though as everything hangs on what happens with the money that is available.
The humour is bleak but laugh out loud funny at times - "Plots set in the future are about what people fear in the present" - how true is that!!
I've read a lot of recent work by this author in the media commenting on society and politics which gave this novel a huge amount of gravitas. There is an uneasy feeling that you are not just reading a work of fiction and that you are listening to someone who is telling the truth.
It's a sobering experience, watching on as the society crumbles and I found that I could only read this book in relatively short sessions, this also allowed her messages of doom to sink in. I took strong messages from this book and will be talking about it for sometime.
Much of the novel is negative about the human spirit but there are glimpses of good in humanity and they are shown when they are particularly needed.
I have to say that I was pleased when I reached the end as it is a tough read but I had gained much from the messages in the way that I think about the economy.
I desperately want to recommend this to everyone but will need to be selective as this will be too intense for many.

19 people found this helpful

jimbob1990

Like a child tried to write a modern 1984

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2020

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Repetitive vocabulary. Flip flops between explaining terminology and introducing characters in great detail, to repeating new ones multiple times before hinting at who or what they possibly are. The "dystopian" ideas in the book are in all seriousness existing problems in the world, depending on where you choose to look. It is like somebody tried to rewrite 1984 but had absolutely no creativity in coming up with how to make it different, so Googled "what's wrong with the world today" and used a random news fluff article to help. And as for other people finding that the book has humour, the only thing I have laughed at before deciding not to read to the end is how poor the writing style is.

7 people found this helpful

JorjaG

Clunky writing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 4, 2018

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Bought this in hardback as soon as it came out. Finally have time for a good read so settled down with excitement but I am three chapters in and have given up. Whilst a great premise it is poorly written - whatever happened to 'show don't tell'? (And shoving explanation into a clunky conversation doesn't count.) I cannot believe her editors didn't have more to say on this.

15 people found this helpful

xuxa

Tedious and Turgid

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2020

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Poor story- telling and characterisation. Completely failed to engage me as a reader. It felt like the author just wanted to lecture or 'educate' me and was more interested in communicating her world view. Some seriously boring passages - many actually - had me skipping page after page. What I found particularly odd was the overall feel that here is a writer who does not like people, is contemptuous of them for the most part. Plenty of books contain unpleasant characters well drawn, but this one was full of cardboard cut outs positioned to move around a stage set of paranoia who the author could not be bothered to develop into more than types. I resented, at the end, the £2.99 I spent on it.

4 people found this helpful

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