Fiction:Lionel Shriver's new novel, The Post-Birthday World, tells the story - or rather, stories - of Irina McGovern, a fortysomething American children's book illustrator living in London with her long-term partner, the "chronically condescending" Lawrence, a fellow American who works in a think-tank and around whom Irina has built her life.
In the first chapter, Irina encounters a fork in her path: whether to leave Lawrence for Ramsey, an attractive East End snooker player, or to stick with her safe and largely satisfactory life. It all hinges on a kiss.
On the brink of that kiss, the narrative splits, and parallel outcomes play out in alternating chapters. In the first version, Irina kisses Ramsey, and the life she might have led with him is delineated. In the second, she does not kiss him, and this version follows her future with Lawrence.
Like the dualistic nature of the novel itself, Shriver's writing is curiously twofold. At times, it seems you're in the hands of an American master who effortlessly scatters striking observations about the human condition throughout the text. Irina notes that "Attractive people have a higher opinion of humanity. Since everybody's so nice to them, they think everybody's nice". In the version in which Irina stays with Lawrence, she contemplates Ramsey from a distance, philosophising that: "Desire was its own reward, and a rarer luxury than you'd think. You could sometimes buy what you wanted; you could never buy wanting it."
At other times, Shriver resorts to cliche, presenting scenes that are insufficiently imagined, as if she is merely thinking out loud. Like Shriver, Irina has recently won a major literary award, and is depicted as "scribbling feverishly to meet a deadline". Passages of The Post- Birthday World bear the hallmarks of a phoned-in performance, suggesting that Shriver found herself in a similar predicament to her protagonist. There is a preponderance of bland sentences ("After she and Ramsey had gone at it hammer-and-tongs"); too many weak similes ("Ramsey had a hard-on that could have doubled as a police baton for bashing anti- globalist protestors over the head"); clusters of clumsy verbs ("When Irina and Ramsey cooed over the saffron cream on the scallops, Lawrence wouldn't taste one, but noshed antagonistically at a bread roll whose crust was so thick that he might have been gnawing on Ramsey's leather jacket"). Cooed, noshed, gnawing - it's lazy, and it's distracting.
Yet in the same chapter as the above sentence, just as the narrative has lost you, comes the moving observation that Irina "would never forget the first time she noticed that his hair was beginning to thin, and the piercing tenderness that the discovery fostered. Perversely, she loved him more for having less hair, if only because he needed a little more love to make up for whatever tiny increment of objective handsomeness that he had lost".
Shriver writes with much intelligence and wryness, but little humour. The third-person omniscient narration is occasionally reminiscent of the knowing voiceover on Desperate Housewives, a similarity to which Shriver herself is apparently not blind: Irina notes that "She could hear the narrative of the last two minutes in that waltzing, emphatic cadence with which people compulsively read to children: Irina climbed the big steps to the tall man's dark manor".
SHRIVER IS AN overtly sexual writer who doesn't shy away from describing sex, both good and bad. Masturbation features prominently. She is not, however, a sensuous writer, and fails to bring the novel to life on a sensory level. Irina's world remains wooden, dry, generic. A notable exception is Ramsey's snooker environment, which Shriver captures convincingly.
The twofold nature of the plot at times makes for enlightening reading, but can also prove tedious. Extended bickering goes on for pages, only to be repeated in its twin chapter, with the same accusations being levelled by different characters. Ultimately, it is the twofold quality of the writing that proves most frustrating. Shriver can write, but too often employs shortcuts. At the climax, we are told that Irina "felt diminished, frightened, and defeated". A series of adjectives is not sufficient to encompass the magnitude of the moment. However, Irina's final wave to her lover redeems the scene: "The fingers waggled weakly, while the features of her face ran like ink in the rain."
The Post-Birthday World often reads like a polemic devised to instigate debate about relationships. Sometimes it transcends this status as a discussion document. However, in a novel of more than 500 pages, and from a writer of Shriver's reputation, sometimes is not enough.
Claire Kilroy's second novel, Tenderwire, is shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award
The Post-Birthday World By Lionel Shriver HarperCollins, 517pp. £15