Monday, April 7, 2008

I hate Lionel Shriver

If you liked Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World because:

1) You thought it was insightful, or

2) you thought that the premise was interesting, or

3) you thought that the main character was well portrayed, or

4) you loved the metaphors (see 1 and 2), or

5) you liked We Need to Talk About Kevin, or

6) you thought that anyone who had written Kevin could do no wrong, or

7) For any other reason whatsoever, then

I :

1) Will assault you, and

2) pin you to the ground, and

3) force you to read


I will pay you not to read Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver is the worst author in the world

Lionel Shriver is the worst author in the universe

Lionel Shriver sucks. Please do not ever give her any of your money.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm reading post-b-day world and it's basically trash for those who think. She writes well, sort of, maybe on the sentence level. But aside from the contrivances and poor construction of this book, her writing betrays a heinous kind of self-absorption--maybe she just needs a good editor..Regardless it's hard to tell if she has a soul..

"Does this refer to me?" "Oh no, it is I who am inane." said...

Hi!

I agree about Lionel Shriver. When I began reading Kevin I was immediately struck by how beautiful her sentences were, and then struck down by her inability to pin her characters down. Shriver represents to me the kind of author I've always thought must exist, a sort of inversion of the psychologically precocious but unfortunately unlettered amateur, the kind of person that wants to write, has a lot to say about his characters, but can't put down a sentence (the kind, for example, that abounds in India, where I'm from). Shriver on the other hand writes very well but knows her characters not at all.