Novelist Lionel Shriver has built a career around characters of intense complexity and raw connection, but The Post-Birthday World’s perturbed Irina, a London children’s book illustrator, is perhaps Shriver’s most thoroughly explored and convincingly drawn protagonist yet. To cheat or not to cheat? wonders Irina as she grapples with choosing between her devoted partner and his best friend, a fervent, flamboyant snooker player. She’s torn between what is and what might be, in other words. And while that’s hardly the most original of plots, Shriver sharpens her two-pronged narrative with such honesty and wit that readers won’t feel compelled to pick sides—the prospect of either outcome will have them equally hooked.
University of Minnesota Bookstore, Coffman Memorial Union, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-625-6000.
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