It asks just how much sacrifice we'll make to save single members of our families, and whether it's ever possible to save loved ones from themselves. At close to 400 pounds, he heaves from place to place. Rich with Shriver's distinctive wit and ferocious energy, Big Brother is about fat: why we overeat and whether extreme diets ever really work. Her once-dashing brother, her childhood hero, has become unrecognizably fat. After the brother-in-law has more than overstayed his welcome, Fletcher delivers his wife an ultimatum: it's him or me. by Lionel Shriver RELEASE DATE: June 4, 2013.

Soon Edison's slovenly habits, appalling diet, and know-it-all monologues are driving Pandora and her fitness-freak husband Fletcher insane. The once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds. When Pandora picks up her older brother Edison at her local Iowa airport, she literally doesn't recognize him. 'Her best work… presents characters so fully formed that they inhabit her ideas rather than trumpet them' New Republic 'The latest compelling, humane and bleakly comic novel from the author of We Need to Talk about Kevin' Evening Standard 'Shriver is wonderful at the things she is always wonderful at. It is a conversation piece of impressive heft' New York Times 'Lionel Shriver's Big Brother has the muscle to overpower its readers. 'Shriver is brilliant on the novel shock that is hunger… glorious, fearless, almost fanatically hard-working prose' Guardian 'A surprising sledgehammer of a novel' The Times 'I listen to a lot of jazz,' she says, before pausing and adding wryly, 'By necessity.' best novel yet' Independent on Sunday Alas, her husband, Fletcher, a self-employed high-end cabinetmaker, now spurns the. Jazz music is a strong presence in Big Brother. 'It's a natural consequence of reading the newspaper.' Unlike many of her characters, she enjoys a fulfilling marriage to jazz drummer Jeff Williams. 'It's humanity that's dark, not me!' she jokingly exclaimed. Shriver doesn't accept the notion that she is a personally macabre individual.

Those times when nothing terrible is happening are surprisingly brief and rare and precious.' But these characters aren't innately doomed, 'I don't intend the marriage in Big Brother to be a bad one, but they're having their problems.' Relationships are only interesting when something's going wrong in them. And there's a reason these characters' relationships always seem to be in turmoil, 'Look, I don't write about happy-clappy relationships. Big Brother continues in this vein despite the subject matter being less overtly violent.

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