The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047

By: Lionel Shriver

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

The brilliant new novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin centres on three generations of the Mandible family as a fiscal crisis hits a near-future America.

It is 2029. The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their 97-year-old patriarch dies. Yet America's soaring national debt has grown so enormous that it can never be repaid. Under siege from an upstart international currency, the dollar is in meltdown. A bloodless world war will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Their inheritance turned to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment but also - as the effects of the downturn start to hit - the challenge of sheer survival.

Recently affluent Avery is petulant that she can't buy olive oil while her sister, Florence, is forced to absorb strays into her increasingly cramped household. As their father, Carter, fumes at having to care for his demented stepmother now that a nursing home is too expensive, his sister, Nollie, an expat author, returns from abroad at 73 to a country that's unrecognisable. Perhaps only Florence's oddball teenage son, Willing, an economics autodidact, can save this formerly august American family from the streets.

This is not science fiction. This is a frightening, fascinating, scabrously funny glimpse into the decline that may await the United States all too soon, from the pen of perhaps the most consistently perceptive and topical author of our times.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2016 Lionel Shriver (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Lionel é a melhor

Espero com ansiedade o aparecimento de cada título da Lionel na Audible. Amo todos. Este é inesquecível. Um futuro surpreendente. Muito bem gravado.

So prescient

a nearly prophetic description of our current situation. Insightful account of the path to hyper inflation that we are on we are on with government controlled fiat money. How sound money which is backed by hard work (energy and time) like gold like gold (and Bitcoin if you ask me) is the base layer of any civilization. destroy the money by inflating it to finance government largess, will destroy the society in the end.

Imaginative and engrossing

This was an imaginative and engrossing book. I hope it doesn’t come to pass, but who knows? The author deserves high praise for warning us of what may be ahead.

Insightful, Original Vision of the Future

A thought provoking story of how institutions may collapse but communities and families can survive

What a great read!

Loved the story. Shriver has a gift for portraying economic climate through human interactions and his storytelling has a welcoming humour beneath the harshness of the situations.

Destopian, boring, endless - non liable for return

It took forever to get to the exiting part. The book ended before the exiting part. The characters are unremarkable, the story plausible but uninspiring. You will be so happy when its over. Worst of all, its not possible to return this title.