Game Control - Softcover

Shriver, Lionel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007578016 ISBN 13: 9780007578016

Publisher: The Borough Press, 2015

Synopsis

Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor’s ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition. Set against the vivid backdrop of shambolic modern-day Africa – a continent now primarily populated with wildlife of the two-legged sort – Lionel Shriver’s Game Control is a wry, grimly comic tale of bad ideas and good intentions. With a deft, droll touch, Shriver highlights the hypocrisy of lofty intellectuals who would “save” humanity but who don’t like people. “Shriver steers her plot through some truly outrageous arguments. But her work is all the more valuable for its flagrant defiance of political correctness...The controversy that consumes [the story] is compelling.” – The Times (London) “A sardonic, sexy, salutary novel about, of all things, population control.” – New Scientist

About this title

About the Author:

Lionel Shriver's books include The Post-Birthday World, Game Control, and the Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin. She writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Independent. She lives in London.

From AudioFile:

In Nairobi, Eleanor Merritt works for a family planning group and becomes enmeshed with some zanies with a bizarre plan for saving the planet from overpopulation by killing two billion people. Author Lionel Shriver intends this to be a comic novel, but that's not what Laural Merlington delivers. Rather, her utterly serious tone misses the comedy of the absurd, instead emphasizing the zealotry of the various factions involved. Eleanor's wavering devotion to Calvin, the architect of the plot, comes through, and some of the minor characters, like Panga, Calvin's ghost lover, are well portrayed, as is the plight of Africa's destitute. Overall, the novel comes across as a diatribe on population control--conscientiously read. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: The Borough Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0007578016
• ISBN 13: 9780007578016
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384