The Post-Birthday World - by Lionel Shriver (Paperback)

About the Book

Irina McGovern enjoys a quiet life in London with Lawrence Trainer, a smart, loyal, disciplined intellectual. Their relationship is rock solid--until the night Irina finds herself dying to kiss another man. This enchanting work depicts Irina's alternating futures with two very different men.

Book Synopsis

"Complex and nervy, Shriver's clever meditation will intrigue anyone who has ever wondered how things might have turned out had they followed, or ignored, a life-changing impulse." -- People (Critic's Choice)

This dazzling novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin takes a psychological and deeply human look at love and volition

Does the course of life hinge on a single kiss? Whether the American expatriate Irena McGovern does or doesn't lean into a certain pair of lips in London will determine whether she stays with her smart, disciplined, intellectual American partner Lawrence, or runs off with Ramsey--a wild, exuberant British snooker star the couple has known for years. Employing a parallel-universe structure, Shriver follows Irena's life as it unfolds under the influence of two drastically different men.

In a tour de force that, remarkably, has no villains, Shriver explores the implications, both large and small, of our choice of mate--a subject of timeless, universal fascination for both sexes.

From the Back Cover

American children's book illustrator Irina McGovern enjoys a secure, settled life in London with her smart, loyal, disciplined partner, Lawrence--until the night she finds herself inexplicably drawn to kissing another man, a passionate, extravagant, top-ranked snooker player. Two competing alternate futures hinge on this single kiss, as Irina's decision--to surrender to temptation or to preserve her seemingly safe partnership with Lawrence--will have momentous consequences for her career, her friendships and familial relationships, and the texture of her daily life.

Review Quotes

"Shriver has a gift for creating real and complicated characters and putting them in less-than-simple situations...Highly engrossing novel..." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Hot." - Time magazine
"Fascinating." - Christian Science Monitor
"A brilliant 'what if?' novel. But that barely scrapes the surface in describing Shriver's imaginative feat.... Shriver holds up a prism, one that refracts a spectrum of possibility in character and consequences.... It's heady, very grown-up stuff--even when the grown-ups are behaving badly. . . . But what's most impressive about The Post-Birthday World is its simultaneous cohesion... and unpredictability.... It's mad genius. Few novelists can so successfully pull off one novel. In a tour de force, Shriver manages two." - USA Today
"Ingenious...delightful...[Shriver] has produced a novel that's equal parts entertainment and psychological massage." - Philadelphia Inquirer
"Ingenious....there is an impressive freshness in her treatment. The writing is intelligent, the characterisation thoughtful, the insights into love, sex and snooker sharp. After her acclaimed 2003 novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Shriver confirms her reputation as an original talent." - Mail on Sunday
"Shriver's an extraordinary writer. Her perceptiveness of male-female relationships is unsettling, dangerous, familiar and voyeuristic. [The Post-Birthday World is] impossible to put down." - Daily Telegraph (Australia
"Extraordinary...Before it was co-opted and trivialized by chick lit, romantic love was a subject that writers from Flaubert to Tolstoy deemed worthy of artistic and moral scrutiny. This is the tradition into which Shriver's novel fits." - Entertainment Weekly
"This is a compulsive, clever, wise and witty novel." - The Times (London)
"Compelling...ingenious...inspired." - The Evening Standard (London)
"Shriver is very obviously a perceptive observer and clever chronicler of the human condition, in all its messy, unresolved glory." - The Nelson Mail (New Zealand)
"Shriver writes with much intelligence and wryness....The twofold nature of the plot...makes for enlightening reading." - Irish Times
"The Post-Birthday World is a...radical book." - The Scotsman
"Provocative....The Post-Birthday World is...as unflinching as they come." - New York Times
"In The Post-Birthday World and the real world, there are no right or wrong choices. There is only life. It's messy, but consider the alternative. Shriver does. Meticulously." - Miami Herald
"A riveting novel....Refusing to indulge in "happily ever after" fantasies, Shriver has created an adult choose-your-own-ending book, with fascinating results." - Denver Rocky Mountain News
"Complex and nervy, Shriver's clever meditation will intrigue anyone who has ever wondered how things might have turned out had they followed, or ignored, a life-changing impulse." - People (Critic's Choice)
"[A] tour de force in literary structure and mastery of language...engrossing." - Sunday Telegraph (Australia)
"Unflinching.... One certainty is that Ms. Shriver is not interested in fostering illusions about love....The Post-Birthday World is disturbing because it seems real: Irina's wavering and soul-searching are not the comic vacillations of Bridget Jones, and the choices she makes are not the pragmatic decisions of an emblematic woman ambitious to 'have it all.'" - Wall Street Journal