Fiction

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

Item: Big Brother
Author: Kerryn Goldsworthy

Reviewed by Kerryn Goldsworthy •

June 2013, no. 352

Big Brother

by Lionel Shriver

Fourth Estate $29.99 pb, 373 pp, 9780732296384

Fiction

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

Reviewed by Kerryn Goldsworthy •

June 2013, no. 352

The novel for which Lionel Shriver is best known, We Need to Talk about Kevin (2003), generated endless discussion across the spectrum of readers, from buzzing suburban home-based reading groups to the pages of the Guardian and the New York Times. Much of this discussion circled around the question of the first-person narrator and mother, Eva Khatchadourian, and her relationships with her uncomprehending husband and her psychopathic son.

Kerryn Goldsworthy

Kerryn Goldsworthy won the 2013 Pascall Prize for cultural criticism, and the 2017 Horne Prize for her essay ‘The Limit of the World’. A former Editor of ABR (1986–87), she is one of Australia’s most prolific and respected literary critics. Her publications include several anthologies, a critical study of Helen Garner, and her book Adelaide, which was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. In November 2012 she was named as the inaugural ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellow. Her Fellowship article on reviewing, ‘Everyone’s a Critic’, appeared in the May 2013 issue of ABR.