How does one like a book and hate it? I'm not sure, but this one fits the bill.

At 50 years of age, Shep Knacker is ready to leave the rat race behind and hop a plane to live out his days with his cool million dollars on the sands of a remote African island. Whether his wife and son comes along, well, it almost doesn't matter. But then his wife comes home and announces she has a deadly form of cancer and needs him to stay at his job for the healthcare. What follows is the year in the life of a very sick and often not very nice woman, her suck-up husband, his cynical best friend with a severely disabled daughter and a few other characters, none of whom are very likeable.

Lionel Shriver does a terrific job of weaving within a story a valuable critique of healthcare in America. Real life examples show how messed up it is - from Shep running through his million dollars within the year (and that's with insurance) to his father's inability to pay for assisted living without selling everything he owns, to his best friend's wife taking a job just to get the insurance they need to care for their daughter. Even Shep's boss lets loose with a tirade on the ills of healthcare from the employer side.

Why didn't I like this book better? Honestly it's hard to read this amount of unrelenting cynicism. At times I found it too graphic (i.e. the husband helping with an enema). At other times it was unbelievable that someone could be this bitter. That said, the ending had a nice lift to it, a hopefulness that not all was wrong with the world.
Lisa Ard
Author of Fright Flight, Dream Seeker Book One

an NPR Best Book of 2010...and I like Lionel Shriver (who wrote We Need To Talk About Kevin...could NOT PUT IT DOWN!!!)

Hmmm. This book was, similar to the last book I read, depressing and filled with characters who are bitter. ???

This novel made me very anxious. The main character saves and scrimps his whole life for an early retirement in a developing country where his money can go far and his responsibilities are few. He sells his company and is preparing to leave for his dream retirement, when his wife is diagnosed with mesothelioma (a type of cancer without possibility of cure, apparently). He then spends his entire nest egg on treatments for her, knowing all along that she will die and that he is only extending her life by months. Still, it's what you have to do, right?

Depressing!

The last 60 pages of the book turned around a bit, and were almost enjoyable, but the twist the story took didn't seem very real or realistic.

A bit meandering and long, but good overall.

This book really struck upon the fact that you can work hard and honestly all your life and quickly end up with nothing. There's more to this story than I expected with minor characters going through their own struggles as well. In the end, worth reading but don't bother putting it at the top of your to-read list.

This is the third Book by Lionel Shriver, that I have begun to read, but of those 3 books, the only one I have ever managed to finish. is "we need to talk about Kevin"

Why I find it hard to finish her books, when she can write a good story, with topics that make you think? When the story is a important one with a point? The simple fact is, I can't finish them, because I can't stand the way she writes her female characters.

I recognise that women such as the ones in the book exist. But I just can't like them. Even the mother from 'Kevin' was a bitch at times, but I copuld sympathise with her, but no other women from her books can I

Glynis was such a bitter and awful woman, I wished her to be dead, so she could let Shep get away to his alternate life, away from all the other pressures. Flicka mum (loved this young girl) was a compllete pain in the arse, for god sake woman, get pissed off will you!!!!

I tried to get through this book, but just couldn't in the end. Glynis was just irritating me beyond belief, I was at the point were every page I'd hope to turn it and find she was dead.

I felt sorry for Shep, and really wished he would stop wasting his money on the ungrateful cow.

Sorry, it has been 3 times I've tried, no more. Lionel, you are off my reading list, I'll be banning your books from here on in, no matter how much they are praised by the critics, I can't takke it no more!!!

I really liked this book. I found The characters to be well developed and full. The situation more or less believable. And really, this book, for me, was a testament to the relationships we have with other people and who gets to count as family.

Basically this book goes: depressing, depressing, depressing, depressing, HORRIFYING, depressing, depressing, somewhat redeeming, sad, happy ending. If you can get through Shep's life when he loses his dream to escape the rat race, watches his wife battle cancer, his best friend's daughter suffer loudly and sarcastically through a hereditary illness, having to put his father in nursing home, then you might make it to the ending. It was a struggle for me for a while.

Another book about a family (two families, in this case) in which all or most of the members are hard to like. I almost put this book down in the first few chapters; I just couldn't read another novel in which the overprivileged whine about how much their privilege costs them. Then the story--and the characters--got a little deeper. She almost lost me in the middle with a truly gruesome subplot, and frankly I'm still not sure what the point of all that was; I think the character in question could have moved from beginning to his end in a fluid arc that made perfect sense without the complete nastiness of the interim fate Shriver gives him. (And if you've read the book, you know who and what I mean).

But I loved the end section of this book. I didn't think I would, but I did. It almost made the whole journey worthwhile.

One huge issue: the adult women are "beautiful" and we are told that again and again, as though it were a definition of character; their respective husbands and children seem cowed by this "beauty". It was boring. The men and the children were much more interesting to read about; they had flaws both physical and emotional. Shriver also plays repeatedly on a theme of weight gain as malady. In a book which centers on the very severe illnesses of several characters, I felt a little sick every time the author treated extra pounds like a plague that ruins lives. I can't shake the sentence in which the "one sick kid and one fat one" of a character are stated as equal burdens. (Come to think of it, it echoes the way the "beauty" of the wives is treated as a consolation for the men).

ok, a bit heavy though

Be warned - this is a book in which you will very likely HATE every single character. Your hate will be exhausting and the end is so trivial and stupid you will likely say "well, that is X hours I will never get back." Much of the book left me thinking Shriver has a political agenda - enough already. I enjoyed We Need to Talk About Kevin (where I also strongly disliked most of the characters) but this one had the added bonus of including a secondary character about whom you sit for 80% of the book wondering "why is this person part of the book?" I think I'm done with Ms. Shriver.