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Author Lionel Shriver.Sarah Lee

Lionel Shriver is the author of more than a dozen novels, including So Much For That, a finalist for the National Book Award, The Post-Birthday World, and We Need To Talk About Kevin, which was adapted into a feature film. Her latest novel, The Mandibles, published in June, is set in a near-future America where the government has defaulted on its loans, the dollar has become worthless and society has begun to collapse.

Why did you write your new book?

Idly scribbling on a notepad about three years ago, I finally got round to calculating that, were I to prove as long-lived as my paternal grandfather, who died at 96, I could still be alive in the year 2053. I was horrified. I was interested in why I was horrified. All the problems I follow closely are set to peak mid-century: freshwater shortage, waning food supply, human population growth, sovereign debt (owing to the entitlement burdens of people like me living to 96). I wanted to express the impact of these difficulties on a single family – which is so much more compelling than debating dry non-fiction talking points. Besides, anxieties on paper aren't menacing; they're entertainment! I had a ball writing this book.

Whose sentences are your favourite?

Edith Wharton's. She's elegant without being showy. Wharton's sentences are so well-crafted that you don't notice how well-crafted they are. That is good writing. She takes you directly to content (and she was incredibly canny about what makes people tick), without distracting you with her mastery. I've come to powerfully dislike writers who are showoffs (most of them are men, I'm afraid), and want you to think about the words themselves, rather than what they mean. Interestingly, these qualities of transparency and clarity, the lack of fussiness, combined with fluidity, and balance, and precision, make prose written 100 years ago read as perfectly modern.

Would you rather have the ability to be invisible or time travel?

I'd definitely go for invisibility. A great frustration of trying to figure out other people is the Observer Effect: you can never know what they're like when you're not there. I would love to spy on people with impunity. Although I worry that infinite access to what goes on behind my back might lead to a killing cynicism. As for time travel, I can already do that, can't I? As a reader and now as a writer as well. Bang, bang at the keyboard and it's October, 2029. Much more satisfying than travelling to the real thing and finding out that all along you'd worried about the wrong things.

What scares you as a writer?

I am a festival of fears! I'm scared of abruptly discovering I have nothing left to say. Or of becoming so self-conscious and hyper-aware of my audience's potential for contempt that I can't bring myself to put the stuff out there any more. That's the main reason I don't participate in social media or even read, say, Amazon reviews. It takes a certain nerve – as well as naiveté – to subject your prose to the cold scrutiny of strangers. I don't want to lose that nerve, and that means, most of the time, making the rest of the world go away.

Which book do you think is underappreciated?

I will cheekily nominate more than one. Matthew Kneale's English Passengers is a masterpiece (and hilarious), and shouldn't get lost. Maria McCann's riveting As Meat Loves Salt never got the recognition it deserved to begin with. All of Richard Yates's work has narrowly escaped slipping into oblivion merely because Revolutionary Road finally got adapted for film. Denis Johnson is also under-read and undercelebrated. In general, the process by which certain books survive to become classics entails an element of caprice. Loads of fantastic novels simply disappear from view. That's why it's important to grab a book someone you trust has given the thumbs-up while it's still up in face. You think you'll get around to it later. You won't.

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