by Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver, you have really let me down. This book is really bad. The dialogue is horrible; the protagonist is an ugly character. From what I’d read, I thought this book was supposed to be “balanced.” It’s all nativism, and scheming scamming illegal immigrants. I appreciate your eagerness to take on the tough issues nobody wants to touch, but you’re apparently not always up to the task.

by Geraldine Brooks

I hate to be my usual negative self about this book, because it’s her tribute to her late husband. But it felt braggy. I couldn’t relate to these people’s jet-setting wealthy extroverted life. There, I said it.

by Lionel Shriver

I am a really big Lionel Shriver fan. I’ve liked some of her books more than others. But I love her for being a High Concept author. Here’s an alternative unfolding of history where it’s become verboten to believe that there are any differences in cognitive ability among anyone. Everyone is as smart as everyone else; it’s called the Mental Parity movement, and to say words like “dumb” or “stupid” is as unimaginable as our using the “n-word” is here and now.

You can almost buy that it’s possible. But things go so far in this alt-universe as to allow unqualified people to be tree surgeons and even people surgeons. Naturally, it doesn’t go well.

The protagonist of MANIA is Pearson, a woman with three kids; the older two are “smart”, whereas the younger one, Lucy, is definitely different. The older two were conceived via artificial insemination and have a father with a genius IQ. Lucy is the biological daughter of Pearson’s partner Wade. Wade’s wonderful and easy-going and a manual laborer, not a brainiac kind of guy; and Lucy, being an ordinary little girl, suffers for not being seriously taught anything in school because of the Mental Parity movement.

Pearson’s obvious favoring of the older kids and outright dislike of Lucy (“Lucy bored me”) was never resolved and hard to take. Look, saying that you kid is literally dumb, in a serious way, within her earshot, is Bad even in real life; it’s not a crazy Mental Parity thing to say so. Of course the kid hated her and the older siblings, and acted out.

And Wade never took issue with this? I never got any feeling of actual love among any of these family members, come to think of it.

There’s a lot more going on in the book. Worth reading.

by W. Somerset Maugham

This was kind of a silly book. Pity sex goes sour, and we have to dispose of a dead body. I didn’t like spending time with the main character, or any of the other characters either, living or dead. But I did want to see how it would turn out, and it was short and to the point; that should count for something.