Mania

A Novel

By: Lionel Shriver

Narrated by: Abby Craden

""A fantasy that hews uncomfortably close to today’s reality, where facts and the truth are selectively recognized at increasingly subjective whims . . . . The specifics of Mania are the stuff of bleeding satire, but the novel’s guiding concept cuts close to the bone with no anesthesia. Shriver isn’t one to tip-toe around her subjects. She still knows how to poke the bear. In this case, the bear is us.” — Boston Globe

Set in a parallel yet all too familiar near past, a brilliant subversive novel about a lifelong friendship threatened by culture wars, from the New York Times bestselling author.

In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is ""the last great civil rights fight."" Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word (“stupid”) and encouraged to report parents who use it at home.

A college English instructor, the constitutionally rebellious Pearson Converse rejected her restrictive Jehovah’s Witness upbringing as a teenager, and so has an aversion to dogma of any kind. Made impotent in the university classroom, she’s also enraged by the crushing of her exceptionally bright children’s spirits in primary school. Fortunately, she enjoys the confidence of a best friend, a media commentator with whom she can speak frankly about her socially unacceptable contempt for the MP movement. Or at least she thinks she can . . . until one day the political chasm between the two women becomes uncrossable, and a lifelong relationship implodes.

With echoes of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, told in Lionel Shriver’s inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.

©2024 Lionel Shriver (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Thoroughly enjoyed this

Shriver envisions a world created by Ellsworth Monkton Toohey and it’s every bit as incompetent and frightening as one could imagine.

Really smart thoughts and writing. I was very impressed by the authors take.

This was really a brilliant book with great observations and better yet hallucination on those observations. This definitely reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984.

Fiction for non-fiction lovers

Going back and forth between listening to this book and listening to news and podcasts about the real world, I often confused one for the other. I love her clear avoidance of politics because the message is louder for it. I’m just buzzing right now… and a bit frightened.

Thought-provoking

A fabulous concept, but the relationship between Pearson and Emery drove me crazy. The “happy ending” (sort-of-spoiler alert!!!) was the main character going out for a drink with her horrible gaslighting emotional abuser.

This is 2024

Loved this book, feels like we already live in it. Don’t agree with all of shriver’s assertions but very witty and extremely clever.

Surprisingly thought-provoking

I had assumed that it would be hard to write an engaging book about such a simple premise. Though sometimes I felt the prose was stilted and too hyper-intellectual to drive home a point, it was engaging. I enjoyed seeing two exaggerated sides of an issue not far from our present culture

Dystopian comedy?

If you're fed up with the language and thought police you'll probably enjoy this. I absolutely relate to the protagonist and I read this on the heels of attending a dinner party where I upset some folks by calling an elementary school's practice of not using standard pronouns "idiotic". (Everyone is "they".) I'm old and retired so I am not too concerned with being cancelled,.. from what???...writing audible reviews. :) I found Shriver's book refreshing in a depressing way. Sadly you can actually imagine this future if people continue to mindlessly follow along.

Lionel Shriver is back doing what she does best!

I highly recommend this refreshingly entertaining and thought-provoking listen...especially if you enjoyed Shriver’s earlier dystopian work, "The Mandibles.”

One of Fifty Ways Society Could Have Gone Crazy

We've had our hysterias in recent years. I'll leave the list to you, but let's just say people have unfriended each other for numerous issues in recent times. Well, Ms. Shriver imagines a way that we *could* have lost our minds, but didn't. This underscores how arbitrary our national policy obsessions are, as we lurch from one good person/bad person signifier nobody ever thought of before to another with equal single-minded intensity.

She also deftly illustrates how a certain kind of cheerleader for a cause -- and media darling -- would have been the cheerleader for the opposite cause if only the latter were in vogue instead. The same point occurred after I watched a news anchor's contentious interview with Bill O'Rielly about Bill's treatment of women at Fox during the #MeToo frenzy. I believe the word "harassment" was used. Expressions of disgust were employed. The anchor's name? Matt Lauer.

Brilliant satire

It's not just about political correctness. The book is funny and insightful about the current prediction with social justice. But there is more to this novel. Authenticity hypocrisy personal chemistry.... What is the dominant force that drives mass beliefs?