Mania – Lionel Shriver

Published By: The Borough Press
Pages: 288
Released On: 11/04/2024

What if calling someone stupid was illegal?

In a reality not too distant from our own, where the so-called Mental Parity Movement has taken hold, the worst thing you can call someone is ‘stupid’.

Everyone is equally clever, and discrimination based on intelligence is ‘the last great civil rights fight’.

Exams and grades are all discarded, and smart phones are rebranded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word and encouraged to report parents for using it. You don’t need a qualification to be a doctor.

Best friends since adolescence, Pearson and Emory find themselves on opposing sides of this new culture war. Radio personality Emory – who has built her career riding the tide of popular thought – makes increasingly hard-line statements while, for her part, Pearson believes the whole thing is ludicrous.

As their friendship fractures, Pearson’s determination to cling onto the ‘old, bigoted way of thinking’ begins to endanger her job, her safety and even her family.

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and The Borough Press for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

I read We Need to Talk About Kevin back in school and ever since I’ve been intrigued by Lionel’s work. Her books are unique and a bit odd, happy and sad, strong and powerful, and thought-provoking.

For some reason, I thought this would be a bit more light-hearted, a slightly more casual take on the topic – but I should have realised that Shriver’s books don’t do casual. It’s really intense.

I liked what she was trying to achieve here, it really gives you food for thought, but it felt more like a lecture; like we were being talked at rather than to. It felt like we were being told what to think about the book rather than letting us think for ourselves.

It is thought-provoking, I will admit that, as the world changes and what things we can and can’t say, what will get us cancelled, where is the line between common sense and stupidity or naivety.

I am glad it was short because whilst I found some of it interesting, I think it would have struggled to be any longer without it being too difficult to finish.

I do wish we had more characterisation. I’ve said before I prefer character development over plot, but this didn’t really have either, for me. There is a plot, of course, but it’s more the ideologies and outrage that drives the book. And I didn’t feel I had a chance to get to know the characters either, they felt very 1 dimensional, and so I would have preferred if more time was given to flesh them out a bit.

What I did really like though is the idea that intelligence is not only proven with school grades and achievements. Just because you don’t do well in an education setting, doesn’t make you any less smart, and just because you ace school doesn’t make you worldly intelligent. And that’s important to realise in real life in order to encourage our younger generations, that marks and scores and grades and reports will only get you so far and they are not the be all and end all.

Whether a book is 1 star or 5 star (I generally don’t do star ratings as it’s such a personal choice), there’s no denying the impact Shriver has on the literary world and wider society. She’s always going to write books that divide and I think that is actually one of her strengths. We need books that challenge and get you thinking. Therefore I think it’d make a good book club read as there’s lots of ideas to get your teeth into.