The usual tour de force from Lionel Shriver. Sharply written and very unexpected twist. I read everything she writes, which is a compliment! ( )

This is the 8th Shriver book I've read, and similar to my feelings on Ian McEwan I'm wondering if I've now peaked with her best. Like with McEwan, when she's at her best I love that her writing can shock and surprise me, so when that falls flat it's disappointing.

It's not that long since I read her novel The Motion of the Body Through Space, yet now that I've read Big Brother I can't help but feel she just reworked Big Brother with a bit of a different slant for The Motion of the Body Through Space. In this novel, the protagonist Pandora is happily married and step mum to two teenage children when her jazz pianist brother, who's down on his luck, comes to stay for two months. Since the last time she's seen him, he's gone from svelte to morbidly obese, and when Pandora decides to bite the bullet and dedicate a year to helping him lose the weight, her marriage begins to buckle.

This novel was OK, but it was missing the best of the gloss Shriver's capable of. The story never fully grabbed me - I didn't warm to the characters, and think perhaps it needed another sub-plot weaved in as the main plot wasn't interesting enough to sustain the attention.

3 stars - good enough to finish, but not good enough to particularly recommend. ( )

For whatever reason, I kept turnig pages. This book has the 'it was all a dream' ending. -Not- a fan of that trope. ( )

Engaging, Until It Isn't

Martial love vs. sibling ties. Compulsion vs. control. Enjoyment vs. addiction. Life vs. death. These are among the issues that present themselves in Shriver's well-written and paced novel on the human plight, and another addition to novels featuring obesity. Shriver keeps things moving along and interesting until the final twenty pages or so.

Big Brother involves a not always pleasant jazz pianist older brother, Edison, who comes to visit his successful sister, Pandora, in Iowa. He shocks her by appearing not as his sleek self, the brother she remembered, but as a nearly unrecognizable, almost four hundred pound man. His extended stay of two months, between tours, you know, stresses and strains the family. In particular, the prickly, retentive, and diet-conscious husband, who busies himself fashioning arty and delicate furniture, takes immediate offense and dislike of Edison. The disruption puts husband and wife at odds. The children, Tanner and Cody, take to Edison in their very different ways, Tanner's not manifest till later in the story. Divorce raises its head when Pandora resolves to act as live-in coach to help Edison get down to his normal weight of one sixty-three. This is all good, filled with plenty of ups and downs, frustrations and triumphs, humor and despair, and the kind of ending that pays off your trek with the pair and the family into the victory lap.

Then you come to the conclusion, signaled by a transitional development at the end of Edison's celebratory party. Without disclosing what the end is, you wonder why Shriver chose to wrap things up as she does. Yes, it is understandable. Guilt and impossibility and realism come to mind. Yet, there could have been a better way, one more integrated into the story that would have produced much more satisfying results.

At the top were mentioned novels featuring obesity. The first and the best is Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins. Attenberg concerns herself with the effect of a mother's over eating on her immediate and extended family. It’s brilliant excursion into family relations gone awry. The other is David Whitehouse's Bed. A man decides to rebel against convention, to go out not as obscure but as the fattest man ever. Whip smart writing but essentially vacant in the end.
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Engaging, Until It Isn't

Martial love vs. sibling ties. Compulsion vs. control. Enjoyment vs. addiction. Life vs. death. These are among the issues that present themselves in Shriver's well-written and paced novel on the human plight, and another addition to novels featuring obesity. Shriver keeps things moving along and interesting until the final twenty pages or so.

Big Brother involves a not always pleasant jazz pianist older brother, Edison, who comes to visit his successful sister, Pandora, in Iowa. He shocks her by appearing not as his sleek self, the brother she remembered, but as a nearly unrecognizable, almost four hundred pound man. His extended stay of two months, between tours, you know, stresses and strains the family. In particular, the prickly, retentive, and diet-conscious husband, who busies himself fashioning arty and delicate furniture, takes immediate offense and dislike of Edison. The disruption puts husband and wife at odds. The children, Tanner and Cody, take to Edison in their very different ways, Tanner's not manifest till later in the story. Divorce raises its head when Pandora resolves to act as live-in coach to help Edison get down to his normal weight of one sixty-three. This is all good, filled with plenty of ups and downs, frustrations and triumphs, humor and despair, and the kind of ending that pays off your trek with the pair and the family into the victory lap.

Then you come to the conclusion, signaled by a transitional development at the end of Edison's celebratory party. Without disclosing what the end is, you wonder why Shriver chose to wrap things up as she does. Yes, it is understandable. Guilt and impossibility and realism come to mind. Yet, there could have been a better way, one more integrated into the story that would have produced much more satisfying results.

At the top were mentioned novels featuring obesity. The first and the best is Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins. Attenberg concerns herself with the effect of a mother's over eating on her immediate and extended family. It’s brilliant excursion into family relations gone awry. The other is David Whitehouse's Bed. A man decides to rebel against convention, to go out not as obscure but as the fattest man ever. Whip smart writing but essentially vacant in the end.
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