Lionel Shriver is a columnist at The Spectator and author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, among other books.
The assignment of books for review has always been haphazard. Fellow fiction writers can be tempted either to undermine the competition, or to flatter colleagues who might later judge prizes or provide boosting blurbs. There are no clear qualifications for book reviewing — perhaps publication, but most of all, because reviewers are paid for their
Am I the only one to find the #metoo-ing over Harvey Weinstein a little creepy? Bandwagons always make me want to jump off. And talk about kicking an asshole when he’s down. I resent being made to feel sorry for the man. Now that the confessional groundswell over sexual harassment has moved far beyond this
Matt Ridley’s fine recent Times column was hardly the first to raise the alarm about the pseudo-Soviet intolerance of the left emerging from university campuses. Yet he began with arresting statistics: ‘38 per cent of Britons and 70 per cent of Germans think the government should be able to prevent speech that is offensive to
To my embarrassment, ever since my novel We Need to Talk About Kevin was published in 2003, I’ve been a go-to girl regarding American mass murders. I’m embarrassed because my credentials are so poor — I’m only an expert on a school killer I made up — and because I’ve so little to say. That’s
Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, I took the monuments around the state capitol for granted. The first Confederate soldier killed in the Civil War, Henry Lawson Wyatt, has leaned into the wind on those grounds for 100 years. Atop a pedestal inscribed, ‘To North Carolina women of the Confederacy’, a mother in billowing skirts
In attending to Labour’s Free Ice Cream For Everyone manifesto out of ghoulish voyeurism, I violated a personal rule of thumb. Jeremy Corbyn will not be prime minister. This manifesto will not become law. So why agonise over whether renationalising the railways is fully costed? My rule: avoid squandering time on what ‘might’ happen. Half
On the heels of the Today programme’s invitation to discuss ‘cultural appropriation’ (again), the New York Times reported the disheartening fate of a Canadian magazine editor, Hal Niedzviecki. ‘Anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,’ he wrote, gamely proposing an Appropriation Prize for the ‘best book by an author
On the heels of the Today programme’s invitation to discuss ‘cultural appropriation’ (again), the New York Times reported the disheartening fate of a Canadian magazine editor, Hal Niedzviecki. ‘Anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,’ he wrote, gamely proposing an Appropriation Prize for the ‘best book by an author
This is an extract from Lionel Shriver’s diary, available in the new issue of the magazine, which is out tomorrow. Over dinner, my fellow Professional American Sarah Churchwell and I shared our dismay over what on earth to say about Trump in public. (Sarah Churchwell ever being at a loss for words will astonish her fans.)
Novelists can’t merely tell cracking tales. We’re supposed to save the world. At the University of Kent, a student implored me to inscribe The Mandibles with instructions for ‘how to keep this from happening’ — for the feverish young man now vowed to devote his life to preventing my new novel’s debt-fuelled near-future financial collapse.
Novelists can’t merely tell cracking tales. We’re supposed to save the world. At the University of Kent, a student implored me to inscribe The Mandibles with instructions for ‘how to keep this from happening’ — for the feverish young man now vowed to devote his life to preventing my new novel’s debt-fuelled near-future financial collapse.
When an old friend X came to dinner in London, I sampled what it must have been like during the American Civil War, when families were split asunder from aligning on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon. Lo, this warm-hearted, well-read, intelligent Midwesterner is backing Donald Trump. This was my husband’s introduction to X, whose electoral
