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The Post-birthday World
 
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The Post-birthday World (Hardcover)

by Lionel Shriver (Author)
3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
RRP: £15.00
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Customers buy this book with We Need To Talk About Kevin (Five Star Paperback) by Lionel Shriver

The Post-birthday World + We Need To Talk About Kevin (Five Star Paperback)
Price For Both: £17.54

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Product details

  • Hardcover
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; First Edition edition (1 May 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007243413
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007243419
  • Product Dimensions: 22.1 x 15.7 x 5.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 166,654 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #12 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > S > Shriver, Lionel

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Product Description

Review
Praise for 'The Post-Birthday World': 'Those of us who rave about the dash and dare of Lionel Shriver's fiction can rejoice that 'The Post-Birthday World', a 'Sliding Doors'-style joint tale of alternative loves and lives, will garner the attention she always deserves.' Independent 'Shriver gives us another passionate novel!Like Sliding Doors, the tale splits into two, following the dramatic turns of each choice. Brilliant.' Cosmopolitan 'It's another domestic drama with a compelling twist!the power struggle between the sexes is spot-on. Shriver chalks her narrative cue with relish and, once the story gets underway, it's hard to take your eyes off the green baize.' Tatler "The Post-Birthday World' is Lionel Shriver's forthcoming work about the dilemmas of love - a must if you were gripped by 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'.' Harper's Bazaar Praise for Lionel Shriver and her writing: 'This is an important book!here is a fierce challenge of a novel that forces the reader to confront assumptions about love and parenting, about how and why we apportion blame, about crime and punishment, forgiveness and redemption.' Independent 'One of the most striking works of fiction to be published this year!Desperate Housewives as written by Euripides!a powerful, gripping and original meditation on evil.' New Statesman 'A fearless novel.' Daily Telegraph 'Harrowing, tense and thought-provoking.' Daily Mail 'Terribly honest...she strikes a tone of compelling intimacy. This is heavy material, but Ms Shriver tackles it with admirable panache, turning a sensational story into a troubling one.' Wall Street Journal 'A fascinating, painful meditation on motherhood-as-regret.' Time Out 'Her [Eva's] fierceness and honesty sustain the narrative; this is an impressive novel.' New York Times 'Impossible to put down...brutally honest...Who, in the end, needs to talk about Kevin? Perhaps we all do.' Boston Globe

Cosmopolitan
`Shriver gives us another passionate novel...Like Sliding Doors, the tale
splits into two, following the dramatic turns of each choice. Brilliant.'

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The Post-birthday World
87% buy the item featured on this page:
The Post-birthday World 3.4 out of 5 stars (41)
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Customer Reviews

41 Reviews
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 (13)
4 star:
 (10)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (7)
1 star:
 (6)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (41 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars For anyone who has ever wondered 'what if' in a relationship, 15 Oct 2007
By H. Eaton "Helena Eaton" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Before you spend time reading my review instead of the wonderful "The Post-Birthday world", let me tell you at the start - it's fantastic and you must rush out straight away to buy a copy. Then clear your diary till you've finished it!

The writing is accomplished, the story is compelling, but it is all the little asides, the philosophising about life that for me really takes Shriver's work out of the realm of the ordinary. Again and again while reading this book I was astounded at how she seemed to have written down - very eloquently - thoughts that have been jumbling about in my head for years. Some passages were so personally relevant to me, I felt she must have got inside my head somehow. Perhaps it's just that the theme she expounds upon is universal and perhaps many readers will feel the same way I did.

The story centres about Irina. She has been in a long-term relationship with stable, good-but-boring guy Lawrence. While Lawrence is away one night, she ends up going out for dinner with Ramsey the ex-husband of a former friend. Ramsey is a dapper, sexy, famous snooker player. They have a great night, end up going back to his house and at the end of the first chapter we find them just about to kiss.

Chapter two begins the story of what happened after the kiss. Subsequently we find there is a second chapter two which starts in a world where the kiss did not happen. The book proceeds in this fashion - two of each chapter showing what happens in each possible world.

We've all been there - wondering what would have happened if I left/didn't leave a certain partner. Would my life have been better if I opted for sexy rather than stable? Should I have abandoned security and gone for the dangerous option? If you've ever found yourself wondering what life would have been like IF ONLY ... then you have to read this book and see what happens in each of the post-birthday worlds.

The characters in the book are brilliantly drawn and achingly real. The arguments and rows are so authentic that you feel part of them. You won't find any two-dimensional stereotypes here - all the characters have their good and bad points, their strengths and flaws. There are no goodies and baddies.

Irina is much softer than the female characters in 'We Need to Talk about Kevin' and 'Double Fault' and I was really glad about this. While I loved those two books, I really wanted to see Shriver take on a more gentle character. I found Irina easier to relate to .. perhaps just because she's more like me.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It was my best read of the year so far ... and that's saying something! Go out and get it and prepare to be absorbed!
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars One thing spoils it, 29 May 2007
By Sue "Martin's Aunty" (North Yorks, UK) - See all my reviews
I loved "Kevin" and "Double Fault" so I was eager for this to come out. I am halfway through it, and thoroughly enjoying the story. HOWEVER..... (and I see other readers have commented on this) Americans should not try to "write" in a British accent. I don't care how long they've lived here. The scenes with Ramsey in have dialogue that is toe-curlingly bad, and which makes me cringe as much as Dick Van Dyke's "cockney" accent in Mary Poppins. I don't know why Shriver felt the need to do it, but cor blimey guv'nor, I 'ope she don't do it again, like.
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31 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Not as dark as Kevin, but not a disappointment, 28 April 2007
The Birthday in the title is Ramsey Acton's 47th. Ramsey is a Cockney snooker player who's always runner-up in important tournaments. Irina in chapter one is living with Lawrence, a think-tank boffin Ramsey refers to as 'Anorak Man.' The trio have a tradition of meeting up for Ramsey's birthday, begun years back when Ramsey was married to Irina's friend Jude. On Ramsey's 47th birthday, Lawrence is away so Irina meets Ramsey on her own, uneasily aware of her attraction to him. They end up getting drunk together and Irina is overcome by the urge to kiss him.

The first chapter leaves the couple there, staring at each other on the edge of the snooker table. Chapter 1 is then followed by two chapter 2s, two chapters 3s and so on, which I thought was a brilliantly original idea. In one post-birthday world, Irina leaves Lawrence for Ramsey. In the alternative universe, she stays with Lawrence. I also loved the idea of having darker chapter numbers for the narrative in which Irina follows her wilder, darker impulses and grey chapter numbers for the narrative where she stays with Lawrence. Having said that, Shriver resists social stereotypes. In innumerable other novels, the heroine leaves her loyal, steady husband for a sexually exciting lover who eventually leaves her for another woman. Then she wishes she'd stayed with Mr Secure all along. In The Post-Birthday world, characters are more complex. The final chapter of the book is, like the first, just one chapter. What goes around, comes around. It's fascinating trying to work out whilst reading this final chapter which was the 'real' post-birthday world. But they're not real people, they're literary constructs, I hear the critics cry. Yes, but the strength of these novels is in the fabulously detailed, careful characterisation and especially in the continuity of characterisation, to use a film term. The flavoured popcorn is genius. And there is some wonderful use of figurative language. Taking Ramsey to a literary award ceremony is 'like navigating a formal dinner with a houseplant.' Ramsey can taste his envy of Lawrence's intellectual prowess 'like a fifty pence piece on the tongue.' The moral high ground is 'a lonely steppe.'

Ok, there may be off moments in Ramsey's Cockney/northern dialogue. Shriver has lived in the UK, but she doesn't appear to get the Cockney voice right and Ramsey's voice meanders from the East End into Coronation Street and back out again. This could be deliberate, though - Shriver does give Ramsey the surname Acton and at the end of the novel we learn that Ramsey's parents were middle-class, so when playing the working class snooker player he may be putting an 'act on' , ergo not always sounding 100% genuine.

I didn't find Irina quite as engaging and interesting a character as Eva or as Willy in Double Fault, although Irina is certainly more likeable and readers will identify with her in a way they perhaps couldn't with Eva or Willy. Her central dilemma - whether to go with sexy or safe - is one nearly every reader will have experienced at some point in their lives.The idea that sexy and safe may be one and the same is something we might not have considered.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Dont bother
After 'Kevin' one of my favorite books of all time I couldn't wait to read this.What a disappointment. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Simone

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
I can't believe this was written by the author of We Need to Talk about Kevin (A gripping book that held me throughout and prompted me to buy this one). Read more
Published 1 month ago by B. A. Lewis Lewis

1.0 out of 5 stars amazingly lazy writing
'Did you ever see Dangerous Liaisons? John Malkovich keeps repeating to Glenn Close, 'It's beyond my control. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Trilby Lane

4.0 out of 5 stars A Thought-Provoking Read
I bought this book when it first came out, and have only just read it. I agree with the reviewers who highlight the cockney accent - you would have thought an editor would have... Read more
Published 4 months ago by N. B. Werner

2.0 out of 5 stars Why the need for so many F's?!?!
I am still reading this book and though I am most definitely no prude, it thus appears this story is just an excuse to experiment with writing soft porn or seeing how many times... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mad Muvva

5.0 out of 5 stars Clever, human and brave
This is a challenging novel but, I think, a classic. It takes one moment in Irina's (the heroine) life and then spins two different, unique but cleverly mirrored stories from... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ms. A. Brooke

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious
This book is tedious and long-winded. I didn't care much for any of the characters and found Shriver's style quite self-indulgent. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Exerciser UK

1.0 out of 5 stars Hard going ...
I found the start of this novel promising and liked the characters,however soon tired of the device of repetitive chapters hinging on Irina's different decisions and their... Read more
Published 5 months ago by A. B. Taylor

5.0 out of 5 stars subtle & compelling but bleak
I loved 'we need to talk about Kevin', and I loved this as well.

Shriver writes with unflinching, and at times uncomfortable, clarity and honesty about the... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Misty

3.0 out of 5 stars We Need To Talk About Originality
I'm still having slightly mixed feelings about this book. Upon completion I dropped it onto my coffee table and muttered "What a disappointment" before grumping off to start... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Charlotte Gibson

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