The Mandibles - Rambling Readers

402 pages

English language

Published Jan. 1, 2016

ISBN:: 978-0-06-232824-3
OCLC Number:: 951687889

(1 review)

It is 2029. The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their 97-year-old patriarch dies. Yet America's soaring national debt has grown so enormous that it can never be repaid. Under siege from an upstart international currency, the dollar is in meltdown. A bloodless world war will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Their inheritance turned to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment, but also -- as the effects of the downturn start to hit -- the challenge of sheer survival. Recently affluent Avery is petulant that she can't buy olive oil, while her sister Florence is forced to absorb strays into her increasingly cramped household. As their father Carter fumes at having to care for his demented stepmother now that a nursing home is too expensive, his sister Nollie, an expat author, returns from abroad at 73 to a country …

It is 2029. The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their 97-year-old patriarch dies. Yet America's soaring national debt has grown so enormous that it can never be repaid. Under siege from an upstart international currency, the dollar is in meltdown. A bloodless world war will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Their inheritance turned to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment, but also -- as the effects of the downturn start to hit -- the challenge of sheer survival. Recently affluent Avery is petulant that she can't buy olive oil, while her sister Florence is forced to absorb strays into her increasingly cramped household. As their father Carter fumes at having to care for his demented stepmother now that a nursing home is too expensive, his sister Nollie, an expat author, returns from abroad at 73 to a country that's unrecognizable. Perhaps only Florence's oddball teenage son Willing, an economics autodidact, can save this formerly august American family from the streets. This is not science fiction. This is a frightening, fascinating, scabrously funny glimpse into the decline that may await the United States all too soon, from the pen of perhaps the most consistently perceptive and topical author of our times.

1 edition

crabbygirl reviewed The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver

Review of 'The Mandibles' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

many times seeming like a crash course in economics, this dystopian near-future depicts the increasing ruin of one family after the USA defaults on its loans internationally and cuts itself off, economically, from the rest of the world. Four generations of varying wealth and varying entitlement soon are all equally screwed: there's no safeguard: be it stocks, savings, or gold. even farmland is nationalized when all other forms of wealth are grabbed by the government. a household of 3 plus 1 tenant stretches to 10 and then 14 as family members lose their homes to foreclosure and fire, ultimately to be turfed on the street by a gun-toting neighbor. the final quarter of the book, set more than a decade later when 'order' has been re-established, is more exciting and ultimately quite hopeful but uses a plot twist that we all saw coming and was never going to be believable. …

many times seeming like a crash course in economics, this dystopian near-future depicts the increasing ruin of one family after the USA defaults on its loans internationally and cuts itself off, economically, from the rest of the world. Four generations of varying wealth and varying entitlement soon are all equally screwed: there's no safeguard: be it stocks, savings, or gold. even farmland is nationalized when all other forms of wealth are grabbed by the government. a household of 3 plus 1 tenant stretches to 10 and then 14 as family members lose their homes to foreclosure and fire, ultimately to be turfed on the street by a gun-toting neighbor. the final quarter of the book, set more than a decade later when 'order' has been re-established, is more exciting and ultimately quite hopeful but uses a plot twist that we all saw coming and was never going to be believable.
ultimately, the book was too academic and philosophical to truly be a work of fiction. yes, it got me as scared (if not more so) than the other dystopians like The Wall or Blindness but it also bored me a bit when characters pontificated about monetary policy. (waaay too much exposition to be believed) I mostly enjoyed the embellishments like the new slang, new styles of clothing and home decor, that latinos dominated the language as well as the government, Mexico shutting its border and building a wall, and characters purposefully named after search engines: Goog and Bing. Shiver is great at writing many personalities and how each has to adapt (or not) to the new world order. she does a great riff on how it's easy to conclude that being raped is actually worse than being murdered

Subjects

Families
20160831 new list
Family life
Fiction
Economic conditions
Inheritance and succession
Financial crises
Economic history

Places

United States