The Mandibles: A Family, 20292047

Author: Shriver, Lionel

USA

Published on 9 March 2017 by Harpercollins Publishers (The Borough Press) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 528 pages
197 x 129 x 33 | 370g

THE BRILLIANT NEW NOVEL FROM THE ORANGE PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN.

Distinctly chilling Independent

Unsettling as it is entertaining Financial Times

It’s scaring the hell out of me Tracy Chevalier

In this eerily prophetic novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a once-wealthy family faces the prospect of ruin. This apocalypse is financial the dollar is in meltdown, Americas national debt far beyond repayment.

It is 2029.

The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their 97-year-old patriarch dies, but now their inheritance is 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 cant 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 thats unrecognizable.

Perhaps only Florences oddball teenage son Willing, an economics autodidact, can save this formerly august American family from the streets