:00:00. > :00:00.For much of her career, Lionel Shriver scribbled
:00:00. > :00:09.in obscurity, and those are her words, not mine.
:00:10. > :00:11.Then her seventh novel hit the big time.
:00:12. > :00:14.We Need To Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction
:00:15. > :00:18.Lionel Shriver's latest book is called The Mandibles,
:00:19. > :00:21.and it's set during a financial crisis in America
:00:22. > :00:29.At its heart are four generations of a once wealthy family who must
:00:30. > :00:31.deal with the loss of their fortune and then learn to survive
:00:32. > :00:33.as the dollar collapses, inflation soars and the economy
:00:34. > :00:57.Lionel Shriver, you wrote The Mandibles in 2015,
:00:58. > :01:00.and the picture you paint of America is pretty bleak.
:01:01. > :01:02.Revisiting it now as it comes out in paperback,
:01:03. > :01:15.One of the striking things about revisiting this book
:01:16. > :01:19.after the release of the hardback in the spring of 2016 is obviously
:01:20. > :01:27.we now have a new president, and not the president we expected.
:01:28. > :01:33.So there's a feeling of not quite being overtaken by events,
:01:34. > :01:35.because what happened in the book has not happened yet.
:01:36. > :01:39.In fact, quite to the contrary, the stock market is going
:01:40. > :01:42.through the roof, though I'm not convinced it will stay there.
:01:43. > :01:48.But certainly interest in dystopias, in dystopian fiction,
:01:49. > :01:51.has picked up enormously, and I think the entire landscape
:01:52. > :01:58.of reality has changed, if that's not being a little overdramatic.
:01:59. > :02:06.In that what we consider possible has changed.
:02:07. > :02:08.Donald Trump was initially not going to get elected.
:02:09. > :02:10.The idea of his being president was farcical.
:02:11. > :02:18.As you say, it is a dystopian novel, set in 2029 predominantly,
:02:19. > :02:24.But this isn't a future of lizards running down 5th Ave
:02:25. > :02:28.It's a world in many ways that is very recognisable to us.
:02:29. > :02:34.In fact, I kept the technological innovation to a minimum.
:02:35. > :02:38.There is a little bit, because of course things do move on,
:02:39. > :02:42.but I didn't want the reader's focus to be on gadgets, so I tried to keep
:02:43. > :02:54.the changes between now and then quite modest.
:02:55. > :02:56.I did insert things - there was a major cyber
:02:57. > :03:00.catastrophe in 2024, which I think is highly likely.
:03:01. > :03:03.But I wanted you to be able to walk into this book
:03:04. > :03:12.And we see what happens to one particular family, the Mandibles,
:03:13. > :03:15.and how what they take for granted and perhaps what many of us take
:03:16. > :03:22.You can't get hold of olive oil and wine.
:03:23. > :03:24.And by the end of the book, it's $40.
:03:25. > :03:33.I wanted to go on that nitty-gritty household level.
:03:34. > :03:41.So there's more than one scene in this book that takes
:03:42. > :03:44.And the supermarket becomes a strangely political place.
:03:45. > :03:47.Which it is, rather, because it has to do
:03:48. > :03:53.And what people regard as necessary to their primitive survival varies
:03:54. > :03:59.according to income level, so that most middle to upper middle
:04:00. > :04:06.classes would consider having to live without olive oil
:04:07. > :04:13.I mean, one of the things that people start hoarding and therefore
:04:14. > :04:25.And one that you examine in the book when we have a shortage of it.
:04:26. > :04:28.You explore America's collapse through this one family,
:04:29. > :04:30.and it's not the first time you've explored big issues
:04:31. > :04:38.Well, I think it's a good route in to an issue,
:04:39. > :04:42.and one of the things that happens when an economy breaks down is that
:04:43. > :04:43.civil structures break down, and relationships
:04:44. > :04:58.As a nation, you can stop functioning, as a city
:04:59. > :05:00.or a neighbourhood you can stop functioning, and as a family
:05:01. > :05:06.And you put enough stresses on people, and I do design the plot
:05:07. > :05:09.so that little by little, everyone ends up in the same house.
:05:10. > :05:22.There is one character in this book, Nollie,
:05:23. > :05:25.who is a bestselling writer, like you, who has lived away
:05:26. > :05:28.from the United States for several decades,
:05:29. > :05:33.like you, and indeed her name is an anagram of Lionel.
:05:34. > :05:36.Why did you want to insert yourself in the novel?
:05:37. > :05:39.I'd written enough books by then, I figured I'd earned
:05:40. > :05:51.I used all the truly atrocious working titles of my real books
:05:52. > :05:53.for the titles of her books, and she's an exercise fanatic,
:05:54. > :05:56.and annoys everyone by doing star jumps on an upper floor,
:05:57. > :06:02.Although by this time she's 72 and really doesn't have a hope
:06:03. > :06:04.in hell of looking any better as a consequence!
:06:05. > :06:07.So it was partly just to take the mickey out of myself.
:06:08. > :06:09.But it was also, and there was a slight political
:06:10. > :06:19.intention in that this book, I have to confess, in some ways,
:06:20. > :06:25.economically anyway, demonises the baby boomer
:06:26. > :06:36.And so I was putting myself in the book partly to admit, well,
:06:37. > :06:39.I'm the kind of person that younger generations are going to have
:06:40. > :06:43.to carry, and so it was a kind of mea culpa.
:06:44. > :06:48.You'd been writing novels and getting published and reviewed,
:06:49. > :06:50.and then you had this an enormous success with We Need
:06:51. > :06:55.Is it true, by the way, that that book was turned
:06:56. > :07:01.It was also turned down by 20 different agents
:07:02. > :07:17.It certainly wasn't artistic fervour.
:07:18. > :07:19.And then, as I say, it was this enormous success.
:07:20. > :07:25.Is that only a blessing, or does it bring its own pressures with it?
:07:26. > :07:28.Well, for a while, it did oblige me to revisit a book that I felt
:07:29. > :07:35.And that got a little bit trying, although I always had to be
:07:36. > :07:38.mindful not to complain, because all my professional life,
:07:39. > :07:42.I had been waiting for a book to hit it big, so once I got what I claimed
:07:43. > :07:50.I wanted, I had to keep my mouth shut.
:07:51. > :08:01.Every once in a while I have to go back to it and read
:08:02. > :08:03.a scene or a passage, and sometimes I think,
:08:04. > :08:09.You tackle some pretty big subjects in your books, including this one.
:08:10. > :08:12.And you've written about the health care system in America and obesity,
:08:13. > :08:19.I just look for something that I have a strong
:08:20. > :08:27.And I'm not necessarily obliged in my own book to pick something
:08:28. > :08:40.But I'm just looking for something that I have a strong
:08:41. > :09:07.Lionel Shriver, you always give us plenty to talk about.
:09:08. > :09:08.The weekend has brought a mix of weather. On Saturday some of us saw