Big Brother: Brilliant family fiction from the award-winning author of We Need To Talk About Kevin

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Was a TV star," I said. "He spends most of his time opening used-car lots and doing Rotary Club lunches — " We're not rich," I said. Leaving aside my stepson's inflated assessment of our family's circumstances, rich was a word for other people, and generally for those one doesn't like. "We're only doing okay. And be sure not to say anything like that around your uncle." I corrected with an eye roll, "Step-uncle."

According to the latest thinking on the subject" — we heaved to a stand — " yes." Though I was personally unsure how labeling obesity an "illness" got anyone anywhere. Tanner will never get fat!" said Cody. "He's got to watch his figure so he can keep pawing all over his girlfriends." Glop that much jam on your toast," Fletcher grunted en route to a glass of water, "might as well be eating cake."For many a younger sibling with an older brother looking on, being solicited for an autograph, or whatever this woman wanted, would be a fantasy come true. But not today, and I came close to denying I was any such person just to get away. On the other hand, explaining to Edison why I'd lied would make a bigger mess, so I said yes.

Shriver brilliantly explores the strength of sibling bonds versus the often more fragile ties of marriage." - Booklist What would you do for love of a brother? For love of a husband? For love of food? In Big Brother, Shriver's new and wonderfully timely novel, her heroine wrestles with these vexing questions. Only the scales don't lie." - Margot Livesey

Novels by Lionel Shriver

After slipping between the sheets, Fletcher, too, lay in a wide-eyed stupor. We seemed to be experiencing a domestic posttraumatic stress, as if recovering from an improvised explosive device planted at our dining table. I'd heard enough. Clearing my throat, I walked in. "Get it out of your system now. Just because someone's overweight doesn't mean he has no feelings." Yet when I closed the door behind us, the atmosphere remained conspiratorial. A searing, addictive novel about the power and limitations of food, family, success, and desire. Shriver examines America's weight obsession with both razor-sharp insight and compassion." - J. Courtney Sullivan

Talk about 'ass of the past,' " said Tanner, focused on his keyboard. "What's with all the 'cat' and 'man' and 'dig'? That shit must have been pretty moldy by the time you were a kid." I let him get it out of his system. After another couple of minutes he said, "That polenta dish was huge. I thought we'd have scads left over." I was relieved the woman's suitcase had arrived, since the pariah whom she and her seatmate had so cruelly disparaged must have been the very large gentleman whom two flight attendants were rolling into baggage claim in an extra-wide wheelchair. A curious glance in the heavy passenger's direction pierced me with a sympathy so searing I might have been shot. Looking at that man was like falling into a hole, and I had to look away because it was rude to stare, and even ruder to cry. But then, the joys of obscurity were my own discovery. Like everyone else in L.A., I was raised to regard being a nobody as a death. It may have been easier for me to reject that proposition because from the age of eight I grew up with celebrity at ready hand — or celebrity by association, the worst kind: unearned, cheap. See, what Wynton's done by bringing in Jazz at Lincoln Center is cast the genre as elitist. As high culture, high art. Elitist, can you believe it? A form that came straight outta whites-only water fountains? But that's the drill now, man. Middle-aged boomers hit the Blue Note when they're too out of it to keep up with hip-hop and figure they need to ditch pop for something more sophisticated. It's a pose, man ..."

Big Brother

Got the impression the problem was the way he talked to adults. He was boring the shit out of everybody." I'm not dissing Wynton Marsalis," Edison was opining. "He's brought in some bread, if nothing else. But the trouble with Wynton is he feeds this whole nostalgia thing, like jazz is over, you hear what I'm sayin'? Like it's in a museum, under glass. Nothing wrong with keeping the standards alive, so long as you don't turn the whole field into one big snoring PBS doc. 'Cause it's still evolving, dig? I mean, you got a certain amount of lost free crap, which the public hates, and drives what few folks do listen to jazz even further into the ass of the past. Cats who blow all freaky don't appreciate that even Ornette riffed on an underlying structure. But other Post-Bop cats out there are killing. Even some of Miles's contemporaries are still playing, still innovating: Sonny, Wayne ..." I'm sure you're worn out after your trip," I said hastily, "but you may not be — comfortable in these chairs." I did a rapid inventory: the living room was furnished with Fletcher's rigid normal-size- person creations. But one broken-down recliner in the master bedroom was leftover from the days I lived alone; I'd refused to part with an ugly chair so sumptuous for curling up to read. My husband's confabulations of oak, cedar, and ash were more sensuous for the eye than the ass. As I retrieved napkins at his side, Tanner muttered, "Look more like the beat down type to me." I hoped Edison hadn't heard him. Pando, what's with trashing your own company all the time?" said Tanner. "Someone finally gets a business off the ground in this family, and all you can do is apologize."