The Mandibles
A Family, 2029-2047
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4.1 • 75 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
With dry wit and psychological acuity, this near-future novel explores the aftershocks of an economically devastating U.S. sovereign debt default on four generations of a once-prosperous American family. Down-to-earth and perfectly realistic in scale, this is not an over-the-top Blade Runner tale. It is not science fiction.
In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war that will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Overnight, on the international currency exchange, the “almighty dollar” plummets in value, to be replaced by a new global currency, the “bancor.” In retaliation, the president declares that America will default on its loans. “Deadbeat Nation” being unable to borrow, the government prints money to cover its bills. What little remains to savers is rapidly eaten away by runaway inflation.
The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their ninety-seven-year-old patriarch dies. Once the inheritance turns to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment, but also—as the U.S. economy spirals into dysfunction—the challenge of sheer survival.
Recently affluent, Avery is petulant that she can’t buy olive oil, while her sister, Florence, absorbs strays into her cramped household. An expat author, their aunt, Nollie, returns from abroad at seventy-three to a country that’s unrecognizable. Her brother, Carter, fumes at caring for their demented stepmother, now that an assisted living facility isn’t affordable. Only Florence’s oddball teenage son, Willing, an economics autodidact, will save this formerly august American family from the streets.
The Mandibles is about money. Thus it is necessarily about bitterness, rivalry, and selfishness—but also about surreal generosity, sacrifice, and transformative adaptation to changing circumstances.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver turned a mother-son relationship into a living nightmare. In The Mandibles, the suffering’s fueled by the massive collapse of the U.S. economy in the year 2029. Cool as a cucumber, Shriver observes as the once upper-middle class Mandible family reel from the impact of the crash. She makes her characters’ struggles so real—and makes complicated economic concepts seem so accessible—that we were glued to the story, which blends fictional creativity with the clear-eyed perception of a documentarian.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shriver's latest opens in 2029, five years after a large-scale cyberattack called "the Stonage" destabilized the American economy and shifted all its transactions off-line. Now President Alvarado addresses the nation to deliver the news that the U.S. is once again under attack by a coordinated international effort to sink the dollar and replace it with a new global currency called the bancor. America's response is to default on all its loans, including the T-bills held by American citizens. And just like that, the inheritance of the Mandible family, created by an industrialist forebear and stewarded by patriarch Douglas, disappears. With wit and insight, Shriver details the impact of this new era on the Mandible clan, who are forced to come together to weather the crisis. Soon Douglas and his wife, Luella, are kicked out of their retirement community and begin bunking with his "boomerpoop" son, Carter (a journalist back when there were still newspapers), and his emotionally fragile wife, Jayne, in their Brooklyn brownstone. Carter's sister Avery and her economics professor husband, Lowell, and their three children arrive on the doorstep of her do-good sister Florence, whose job working for the homeless is more stable than Lowell's academic career. What's remarkable about the Mandibles is how poorly they adapt to the new normal, perhaps with the exception of Florence's son, Willing, a teenager with prodigious knowledge of macroeconomics and a dismal worldview formed by the Stonage. Shriver's (Big Brother) vision has a few blind spots, and a time shift forces significant plot points to be recounted by characters later. Nevertheless, Shriver's imaginative novel works as a mishmash of literary fiction and dystopian satire.
Customer Reviews
Too close for comfort
This novel might see Lionel Shriver described as an updated Ayn Rand, an author I'm not particularly fond of. Shriver is a self-described Libertarian, a fact I picked up on about halfway through this novel and fully realized when a major plot point seemingly purposely mirrors Atlas Shrugged. But this story looks to US history with a sharper understanding than Rand had, and these characters, even as brilliant, well-off egomaniacs, are constructed by a more compassionate, clear-eyed author.
Shriver's subject matter always addresses current hot topics in US culture, and this dystopian economic drama feels a little too close for comfort. I felt tense reading this in tandem with election season.
The Mandibles are an upper middle class family, all anticipating an inheritance that evaporates once the driving events of the novel begin to play out. The US of 2029 (huh...) deals with the ultimate consequences of an economy pumped for more than it's worth, and we watch the family struggle through more adversity and togetherness than the average upper middle class family is comfortable with. Throughout, much discussion/explanation of the nature of freedom and its limitations comes from an elderly author (Shriver's projected future self?) and the central character, precocious young "Willing." (Get it? Willing?)
All in all, great read and very well done. The economics bits get a little drudging, but it is captivating in the context of plausibility. Some unflattering depictions could be interpreted as xenophobic, but at heart they are really critiques of our foreign policies and economic bullying. Do unto others...
Excellent Read
One of the best novels I have read all year.
Politically Correct.....nope
I purchased this book in response to the left wing crowd's bashing of Lional's comments regarding "Cultural Appropriations". Will review fully when complete.