We Need To Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver's bestseller about a woman whose son commits a high-school massacre, has a shocking message: some mothers do not love their children.
In Shriver's latest novel, The New Republic, a satire about a group of terrorists in Portugal, the moral is just as bleak: terrorism works.
Shriver knows this, she says, because she has seen it for herself. For almost 12 years the novelist, who is from North Carolina, lived in Belfast, working as a reporter for various American newspapers. She watched as Sinn Fein maintained the illusion that it had no links with the terrorists while reaping the benefits of the bombs. The terror group in The New Republic does exactly the same thing and Shriver's point is that this is what happens: terrorists get what they want. "Zealots have the advantage," says one of the characters. "They never get tired."
Please enable cookies in your browser to display the rest of this article.