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.
Tytania 