Books like The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047

Shriver does a good line in biting social commentary, attacking the U.S. health care system in So Much for That and the obesity epidemic in Big Brother. Here she aims at Atwood-style near-future speculative fiction and takes as her topic the world economy. This could have been fun, but there are a few big problems. Worst is the sheer information overload: tons of economic detail crammed into frequent, wearisome conversations. One character is an economics professor, another a teenage prodigy who spouts off just as much theory. I nearly gave up at 25% (and probably should have) because I was tired of dull economics lessons.Instead of making America’s total financial collapse a vague backdrop for her novel, Shriver takes readers through it event by agonizing event. This means that the first third or more of the novel feels like prologue, setting the scene. When she finally gets around to the crux of the matter – the entire extended Mandible family descending on Florence’s small New York City house – it feels like too little plot, too late. At one point I thought we were headed for full-blown The Road territory, as hyperinflation and competition for resources drive New Yorkers to crime. But, to the novel’s detriment, Shriver then leaps ahead about 15 years, looking at the aftermath and taking her few surviving characters to the rogue splinter state of Nevada. I was disappointed the action didn’t go to Jarred’s upstate New York farm instead.Florence and her son Willing are sympathetic main characters, but Nollie was my favorite player and didn’t show up until the one-third point. A Shriver stand-in, she’s an irascible expatriate novelist dedicated to exercise and her box of manuscripts. Also of note is Luella, the Mandible patriarch’s dementia-addled second wife, who is nicely reminiscent of Bertha Mason. Most of the other characters are odious in one way or another – not that many of Shriver’s characters, whatever the book, can really be described as likeable.Everything Shriver imagines for the near future, except perhaps the annoying new slang (e.g. “boomerpoop”), is more or less believable. But boy is it tedious in the telling. You might crack a rare smile at Ed Balls being the UK’s prime minister in 2029 or Chelsea Clinton being president in the 2040s – that is, if your eyes haven’t already glazed over from passages of dialogue like the following:At the moment, foreign demand for US debt is low—but there are completely unrelated reasons for backing off US debt instruments in a variety of different countries that just happen to be coinciding. Here, the market is hopping: investors can find higher yields in the Dow than in dumpy Treasury securities. Interest rates aren’t likely to stay anywhere near 8.2 percent and this is probably a one-time spike. Jesus, in the 1980s, Treasury bond interest careened to over 15 percent. Bonds paid over 8 percent as recently as 1991.This was my fifth Shriver novel, and possibly my last. She’s getting a little bit too obvious.