A better life a novel

"In a provocative novel addressing contemporary immigration by the sharply observant Lionel Shriver, a New York family takes in a Honduran migrant--who may or may not be the innocent paragon she claims to be. Gloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her 26-year-old son Nico in a sp...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Shriver, Lionel (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2026]
Edition:First edition.
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:"In a provocative novel addressing contemporary immigration by the sharply observant Lionel Shriver, a New York family takes in a Honduran migrant--who may or may not be the innocent paragon she claims to be. Gloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her 26-year-old son Nico in a sprawling house in Brooklyn, decides to participate in a new city program that would pay her to take in a migrant as a boarder. Liberal to the extreme, Gloria is thrilled when sweet, kind, helpful Martine arrives. But Nico is skeptical. A classic live-at-home Gen Zer with no interest in adulthood, Nico resents any interruption of his "hovercraft repose." As the months go by, Martine endears herself to both Nico's sisters, while finding her way into Gloria's heart and even, briefly, Nico's. But as Martine's disturbingly dodgy compatriots begin to show up, Nico conceives a dark twin hostile to both his mother's altruism and the "migrant crisis" in general--and turns out to be anything but a reliable narrator himself. Based loosely on a program New York City Mayor Eric Adams floated but did not initiate, A Better Life is Lionel Shriver at her best: smart, funny, and sensitive to the moral nuances of perhaps the most divisive issue of our times"--
Physical Description:289 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN:9780063482142
0063482142
9780063482159
0063482150
Author Notes:Lionel Shriver was born Margaret Ann Shriver on May 18, 1957 in Gastonia, North Carolina. She changed her first name because of her preference for it. She was educated at Barnard College, and Columbia University (BA, MFA). She has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok and Belfast, and currently lives in London. Shriver wrote seven novels and published six (one novel could not find a publisher) before writing We Need to Talk About Kevin, which she called her "make or break" novel. She won the 2005 Orange Prize for her eighth published novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, a thriller and close study of maternal ambivalence, and the role it might have played in the title character's decision to murder nine people at his high school. The book created a lot of controversy, and achieved success through word of mouth. The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 was published in May 2016.

(Bowker Author Biography)