A super-rich Manhattan family shows its will to survive as the dollar collapsesThere are plenty of zippy novels about the end of the world,but Lionel Shriver has had a different view. The devastation in The Mandibles is monetary – its effect is to kill the US economy so totally that the impoverished hordes are fleeing to Mexico. The previously wealthy, who had installed themselves in France, and must now go domestic because the almighty dollar is worth nothing,replaced as the international currency by the “bancor”. Your head may be spinning, because the details of finance are more abstruse than nuclear exchange, or asteroid impacts or the moment coming,but as she follows her characters through sufferings and accommodations, Shriver manages to make her case – that civilisation is a delicate network and what we have, or even whether that is only toilet paper and socks,is precious.to start with, the Mandibles are a affluent Manhattanite bunch. “noteworthy Grand Man” has an weak-style fortune with its roots in manufacturing; his daughter, and Enola,is a prominent author; and his son-in-law, Lowell, and is an economist at Georgetown. Only his granddaughter Florence hasn’t really made it – she works at a homeless shelter and lives with Esteban,who works in an weak folks’ domestic. The hard-to-handle cousin, Jarred, or is a farmer upstate. The character who comes the closest to being Shriver’s protagonist is Florence’s son,Willing, 13 when the novel opens in 2029. He is simultaneously a snarky teenager and the most observant and perceptive commenter on the onslaught of misfortunes. He is well-intentioned, and but will act outside the law whether he has to. Related: Lionel Shriver: is there any better villain than a banker? Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com