After his wife is diagnosed with cancer, Shep Knacker sees his dream of retiring to a developing country slip away, along with all the money in his once-plentiful bank account, as he tries to navigate America's labyrinthine health-care system. By the best-selling author of
Shep Knacker has been working and saving his whole life in order to afford his "afterlife," an idyllic beach home in a third world country where he and his wife Glynis can think, eat, read, and sleep until the end of their days. Then Glynis is inflicted with cancer and Shep's nest egg begins to vanish into the abyss of the American health care system. In SO MUCH FOR THAT, Lionel Shriver (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) brings her unflinching perspective to bear on the cruelties of disease, aging, and medicine. Shriver has honed a razor-edged attitude towards modern life, and her acerbic tale of how Shep's greatest hopes are remorselessly thwarted acts as a bracing tonic against the fantasies of the American Dream. Shriver's novel, for all its acid realism, is spiked with moments of dry humor, and its characters learn wry surprising truths about where their hearts and values truly lie. SO MUCH FOR THAT was a National Book Award Finalist for fiction in 2010.
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction + Literature Themes
- Subgenre: Health + Daily Living / General, Medicine + Health, General, Money + Finance, Family + Friendship, Stages of Life
- Publisher: Perennial
- Pages: 436
- Edition: Reprint
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: March 8, 2011
- Date Published: March 8, 2011
- Author: Lionel Shriver