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Mania: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Lionel Shriver (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 155 ratings
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"A fantasy that hews uncomfortably close to today’s reality, where facts and the truth are selectively recognized at increasingly subjective whims . . . . The specifics of Mania are the stuff of bleeding satire, but the novel’s guiding concept cuts close to the bone with no anesthesia. Shriver isn’t one to tip-toe around her subjects. She still knows how to poke the bear. In this case, the bear is us.”  — Boston Globe

Set in a parallel yet all too familiar near past, a brilliant subversive novel about a lifelong friendship threatened by culture wars, from the New York Times bestselling author.

In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is "the last great civil rights fight." Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word (“stupid”) and encouraged to report parents who use it at home.

A college English instructor, the constitutionally rebellious Pearson Converse rejected her restrictive Jehovah’s Witness upbringing as a teenager, and so has an aversion to dogma of any kind. Made impotent in the university classroom, she’s also enraged by the crushing of her exceptionally bright children’s spirits in primary school. Fortunately, she enjoys the confidence of a best friend, a media commentator with whom she can speak frankly about her socially unacceptable contempt for the MP movement. Or at least she thinks she can . . . until one day the political chasm between the two women becomes uncrossable, and a lifelong relationship implodes.

With echoes of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, told in Lionel Shriver’s inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.

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  1. Print length
    286 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Harper
  5. Publication date
    April 9, 2024
  6. File size
    2345 KB
  7. Page Flip
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Clever." — Los Angeles Times

“Readers craving sharp social commentary need look no further than Shriver, who is at the top of her game with this scary-smart and scathing satire.” — Booklist (starred review)

 “Shriver . . . suffuses this cogent tale of a toxic friendship with contrarian political commentary . . . . Those sympathetic toward Shriver’s anti-groupthink message will find much to enjoy.” — Publishers Weekly

"Seldom is a book as funny, important and timely . . . I was laughing out loud at the same time as my blood was running cold." — John Cleese

About the Author

Although Lionel Shriver has published many novels, a collection of essays, and a column in the Spectator since 2017, and her journalism has been featured in publications including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, she in no way wishes for the inclusion of this information to imply that she is more “intelligent” or “accomplished” than anyone else. The outdated meritocracy of intellectual achievement has made her a bestselling author multiple times and accorded her awards, including the Orange Prize, but she accepts that all of these accidental accolades are basically meaningless. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CBKJ8SCH
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper (April 9, 2024)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 9, 2024
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2345 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 286 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0008658684
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 155 ratings

About the author

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Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver

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Lionel Shriver is a novelist whose previous books include Orange Prize–winner We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Post-Birthday World, A Perfectly Good Family, Game Control, Double Fault, The Female of the Species, Checker and the Derailleurs, and Ordinary Decent Criminals.

She is widely published as a journalist, writing features, columns, op-eds, and book reviews for the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Marie Claire, and many other publications.

She is frequently interviewed on television, radio, and in print media. She lives in London and Brooklyn, NY.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
155 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Generic Personage
5.0 out of 5 stars Equality Mania gets popped in the snoot
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2024
Shriver chose to start this one in media res. The powers that be (political. cultural, economic) have already gone all in for mental parity. Nobody can lay claim to greater cognitive abillity than any other. Efficiency, rationality,common sense, and fairness have been scattered to the winds in the aftrermath of a sacrificial bonfire to the great god Virtue.
You can immediately see how this will piss off the current crop of cultural and political mandarins who jealously protect their rapidly depreciating turf as guardians of the 2024 Overton window. This one will not be shortlisted for the Booker, the Pulitzer, or the National Book Award.
After the first 50 pages, in which the framework of insanity has been fully explicated, I was wondering, how does she make this a novel? She'd said it all. Impressively, Shriver goes from the macro level of public ideology to the micro level of considering how human relationships can be destroyed by Big Virtuous Ideas, and what we should make of it.
It's interesting to me that she has inoculated herself from accusations of latent Trumpism by her hilarious, and quite deft, dissection in her alternative universe of a Donald Trump who won two consecutive four year terms running as a Democrat. It was also fascinating to see how she warned us of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction, illustrated by the fanciful assertion that the writer of this manuscript might have an IQ in the range of a Palm Springs afternoon temperature.

Kurt Vonnegut took this issue on in Harrison Bergeron. Mike Judge had a different take in the classic Idiocracy. Neither of those guys lived in cancel culture. It took personal and artistic courage to write this, and I congratulate Lionel Shriver for a job well done.
One person found this helpful
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wmjmc
1.0 out of 5 stars Our loss
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2024
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Shriver always makes you pay for her very good writing by making you listen to right wing hackers. With her new book the tariff is alas too high. What could have been an excellent satire devolves into incessant whining about whiners by a run of the mill snow flake. This is a true loss.
5 people found this helpful
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Chelle Stewart
5.0 out of 5 stars A book that will be as essential to read as 1984. Absolutely brilliant
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2024
Mania by Lionel Shriver is a work of genius. True, if a book has a glowing review from John Cleese, you know it will be awesome. Dystopic, speculative fiction, I am here for it. Add in humour and satire, just watch those scorch marks as I race to read it! Needless to say, not even remotely disappointed

Imagine a culture war (not too far from reality, but lets just imagine) and two friends are either side of that culture war. Imagine one friend (Pearson) who is traditionalist and believes that the only way forward is to remain in a bigoted, closed mindset, despite it beginning to affect her professional and private life. Then, on a completely opposite side, Emory starts to go further into the popular opinion, but way to the hard edge of it

Where does this division come from? A reality where calling someone stupid would be illegal, and due to the rule of the Mental Parity Movement, the entire education system is disbanded, qualifications becoming redundant and in a very Orwellian reference, children are to report their friends and parents if they hear anyone use the word "stupid"

It is a terrifing fact of just how close Lionel Shriver writes to reality with a powerful, contemporary reality that we can all relate to. It encourages to meet in the middle instead of going to extremes and this message could not be more poignant

A book that will be as essential to read as 1984 imo. Absolutely brilliant

Thank you to HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction | The Borough Press and the incredible author Lionel Shriver for this epic ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own
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DL, Vienna, Virginia
5.0 out of 5 stars A deep look into equality mania
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2024
This is a very important subject, how far the "equality" can go and what are the consequences.
Excellent writing and deep analysis of the American society under the dominance of Mental Parity.
The alternative history, where Obama lost his second term to Biden, because he was too smart.
6 people found this helpful
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Matilda
1.0 out of 5 stars How the mighty have fallen
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2024
Imagine one of those unhinged rants on Facebook written by a Boomer furious that you can't call your female colleagues "hon" anymore. And now imagine that rant is 300 pages.

That is the exact tone and intellectual vigor of this novel. I hesitate to even call it a novel because there isn't much of a story. It's just Lionel Shriver ranting about snowflakes and the government forbidding people from hurting other people's feelings or something. "Oh but it's a satire!". Yes, that's obvious. But satire can be subtle and cleverly biting, or it can be clumsy, obvious, and overbearing. This is the latter. There are plenty of critical things you can say about the culture of political correctness of the past several decades, especially in regard to higher education and the workplace. But setting up a ridiculous strawman argument under the guise of "satire" is, well, Facebook Boomer-level debate.

Really sad to see this is what Lionel Shriver has devolved into, as her earlier novels were excellent.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

A. Tatarek
5.0 out of 5 stars A really great read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2024
Verified Purchase
I'd just finished We really need to talk about Kevin, which I thought was great, and found this by the same author.
The description of navigation through a world with a different craziness to our own, with a fully invented vocabulary. Didn't put it down until finished.
3 people found this helpful
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