This is my 8th book by Shriver. She is one of my favorite authors and having read her most recent books, I have decided to read her earlier works. This book was originally written in 1998 but was not published until 2012. There are reasons why and Shriver gives her take in a beginning author's note. I find it funny that some reviewers had a problem with her author's note. The book might seem dated but this is what is was like in 1998. You can't make 1998 be 2024. The story concerns Edgar Kellog an attorney who gives up his career to be a novice foreign journalist. He is around 40 and feels unfulfilled. He gets assigned to Barba a mythical land on the edge of Portugal close to Africa. Shriver portrays Barba in very unflattering way and you quickly realize that this book is a satire and I took it as such. Kellog's goal is to cover the local politics and the terror group SOB and to find out what happened to Barrington Saddler the star reporter he is replacing who disappeared. Shriver tells the entire story through Edgar's viewpoint. We see Edgar as someone who has always wanted to be "the guy" and has some definite problems. Once he settles in he discovers the Saddler had created SOB by taking credit for terrorist attacks throughout the world that went unclaimed by the perpetrators. Soon a local group establishes a connection and the goal is Barba independence from Portugal. As an avid reader of Shriver I always enjoy her great satire, humor, and the ability to write on a incredible level. This allows me to forgive her plot holes and occasional tedium through the middle part of the book. I recommend this book after you have read her most recent books from the last 15 years. Shriver is a controversial writer but someone you should consider reading. ( )

As she explains in her author's note, Lionel Shriver wrote this comic novel about terrorism in 1998, but was unable to sell it because of American lack of interest in terrorism. So now it's a novel set in an alternate past. I found it quite funny.

The main character Edgar is an unpleasant, chauvinistic guy who feels he's always second best. He's always jealously hero-worshiping someone else. Even though the character was a jerk and kept making poor decisions, I felt sympathetic to him and I was rooting for him. He doesn't understand other people and views them in the most shallow way. I think it's tricky to pull off an awful but likable main character, and the whole novel is consistently in his voice. Edgar has thrown over a career in law to become a journalist, and is assigned to a (fictitious) area of Portugal. Again, making up a country is something that could go very very wrong but I thought Lionel Shriver got it just right.

Edgar is replacing another journalist, Barrington Saddler, who has mysteriously vanished. Barrington was a larger-than-life person who was everyone's favorite guy, and all the people left behind compare Edgar unfavorably to the legendary Barrington. Why can't Edgar ever have the charisma of someone like Barrington? It just so happens that when Barrington arrived in Barba a horrifying terrorist movement arose there, and when he disappeared it stopped. I can't say that I was surprised by the twists and turns of the plot, but I enjoyed them. I was also anxious for Barrington Saddler to finally reappear, and I wasn't disappointed by the way it happened. Journalists, academics, terrorists and the people who love them all get skewered in this farcical story. Obviously, terrorism isn't really funny, and again I think Lionel Shriver got a difficult thing just right.

Lionel Shriver's prose is very ornate. I'll give you the first sentence as an example--"Whisking into his apartment house on West Eighty-Ninth Street, Edgar Kellogg skulked, eager to avoid eye contact with a doorman, who at least got a regular paycheck." You'll either love it or hate it. But I stopped even noticing it after a few pages because I found the story so absorbing. It also made me nostalgic for that bygone time when Americans had floppy disks, used AltaVista for their search engines, didn't have cell phones, and never gave terrorism a thought except to blithely donate money to the IRA.

I guess my only complaint about this novel is about the supporting characters who were journalists in Barba. There were five to seven of them, and each one was thinly sketched and then I was supposed to remember them all. Some of them end up being important, like Nicola and Henry, so I got a grasp on them. But others made no impression, so by the end of the book I still could not tell the difference between Win and Ordwray, if indeed those are two different characters.

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway, and I'm glad I did. ( )

I picked this up to read in lockdown 3 as I usually enjoy Lionel Shriver's novels. For me this novel kept me wanting to read on but wasn't quite as polished as some of her others. The novel is about journalists, never anyone's favourite group of people but Lionel Shriver has decided to depict some highly unlikeable characters. Edgar Kellogg gave up his career as a lawyer to become a journalist and manages to get a posting in a fictional Portuguese backwater, Barba, taking over from Barrington Saddler, a larger than life character who has mysteriously disappeared. He is covering the terrorist activities of a local group calling for independence for the Barba region. For me, the twist in the novel was obvious long before it arrived. Other readers may or may not see it coming. The strong winds of Barba, the dreadful local beer and food and the local politician are all here for fun, as our the journalist conversations. I found plenty to laugh out loud at. As I knew what was coming, I found the novel was almost grinding to a halt around the middle and I wanted it to hurry along. It did eventually pick up a pace and Lionel Shriver pulls something together that is, as ever, insightful and witty. ( )

I got about seventy pages in after a couple of weeks, and simply did not want to go on. It's regrettable, since I really enjoy most of Shriver's previous works, but I could not get into this novel. ( )

Way too clever ( )