Win the NEXT book of the month June: Property by Lionel Shriver Now to Love NZ

Sometimes a short story collection comes along that blows your socks off. Of course, Lionel Shriver is used to blowing people's socks off, being the author of the Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin. Between the covers of her latest offering are two novellas and 10 short stories concerned with property, and it's not nearly as dull as it sounds. In turns eloquent, funny, sharp and merciless, the characters in her stories grapple with the things they possess – things that sometimes end up owning them.
It opens with the outstanding novella The Standing Chandelier: Jillian and Weston have been friends for 25 years and when Weston pops the question to his girlfriend Paige, Jillian creates a highly personal gift for the happy couple. But chandelier or no chandelier, Paige has no intention of allowing Jillian to continue her friendship with her fiancé.
In Domestic Terrorism, millennials come into Shriver's cross-hairs: thirtysomething Liam refuses to get a job and move out of home so his parents move out instead, but not before Liam has become something of a cause célèbre. In The ChapStick, a middle-aged man finally finds his mojo in the worst possible place – airport security – and in Paradise to Perdition an embezzler discovers life on the lam on a tropical island isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Show more

Related competitions

View More