A Better Life by Lionel Shriver

 Excellent, quick read by Shriver about an NYC family that takes in a Honduran "migrant" out of ideology. As usual, Shriver pulls no punches and provides an excellent story.

Mania by Lionel Shriver

 Shriver's latest novel. This one is an "alternative history" of the last 10 years, where a Mental Parity mania takes over the country that denies that there are any intelligence differences between people. Naturally bad things result. Not her best novel.

Double Fault by Lionel Shriver

I haven't been keeping up with this reading log, although I've been reading. I'll post on the books I can remember I've read over the last few months.

This one is a novel by the same author as We Need To Talk About Kevin. And like that book, it explores a sort of Nietzschean theme of the will to power as fundamental to human relations. Shriver likes to take the most intimate of human relations - in the case of Kevin, that between mother and son - and tell a story of two people attempting to overcome the will to power to know each other. And if you are at all familiar with her work, she's not too optimistic about the outcome.

Double Fault does to marriage what Kevin did to motherhood. Shriver ups the ante by making the marriage partners both struggling professional tennis players. Since competition is at the heart of what they do, there is the danger that the marriage will become a contest as well - and it does.

This book isn't quite as compelling as Kevin, but still a good read.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Outstanding novel about a teenage killer, told from the point of view of his mother. Shriver is a perceptive psychologist.