JUNE 2018 - AudioFile
At first, author-narrator Lionel Shriver (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) may sound laconic, but the persevering listener will be rewarded by this striking collection. Bookended by two novellas and with a passel of short stories in between, this audiobook is packed. Shriver proves herself a narrator who knows when to inflect her words and mimic her characters’ cadences to reveal their inner and outer lives. The theme of property—both stuff as well as occupation or ownership of places—connects these works like ornaments on a single string. Her spare but engaging reading makes these varied stories engaging and meaningful. The novellas, THE STANDING CHANDELIER and THE SUBLETTER, demonstrate the author’s ability to show people warts and all yet captivate the listener. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Stephen McCauley
Shriver's intellect and talent, her political convictions and her impressive confidence are all on display in…her assertive, frequently funny and altogether satisfying first collection of shorter fiction…Property feels more unified than many story collections, and reading it has many of the satisfactions of reading a novel. This is largely due to Shriver's commitment to exploring her theme. From one story to the next, the acquisition of things—land, money, empty nests—rarely leads to happiness and often stimulates character traits that might better be kept in check…[Shriver's] confident grasp of the material and her natural gifts as a storyteller will keep you in her spell and leave you, at the end, slightly altered. "I don't know if the moral of this story is that you should never buy a house," one narrator says. I don't know if that's quite the moral of Property either, but such is Shriver's power that I finished this persuasive and richly entertaining book wondering if I might not be better off selling mine.
Publishers Weekly
★ 02/19/2018
The wry and nimble novellas and stories in this collection by Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin) focus on how homes and objects shape the lives of those who own them. The collection, which concentrates on middle-class Brits and Americans, is bookended by two richly detailed and sardonic novellas. In the first, “The Standing Chandelier,” a freelance web designer’s relationship with his girlfriend is tested after his high-strung ex-girlfriend gives them a gift that dominates their house. In the concluding novella, “The Subletter,” an American journalist who has been making a meager living in Belfast for years is brought to the edge of a breakdown when she has to share her apartment with an ambitious young subletter. In between, mordant tales touch down in the lives of a young American making herself at home in an African household (“Kilifi Creek”), a recent widow discovering that her late husband had done more than she thought to take care of a seemingly simple garden (“The Self-Seeding Sycamore”), and a slacker whose parents find him impossible to uproot from the household (“Domestic Terrorism”). Shriver’s stories will make readers laugh when they feel they shouldn’t, and the uniting theme of houses and humans works exceedingly well, turning up new wrinkles with each successive story. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Shriver... is a brilliant satirist and virtuosic writer....even if Property isn’t your dream house, it’s a diverting enough place to spend an afternoon or two.” — Associated Press
“The collection, which concentrates on middle-class Brits and Americans, is bookended by two richly detailed and sardonic novellas.... Shriver’s stories will make readers laugh when they feel they shouldn’t, and the uniting theme of houses and humans works exceedingly well, turning up new wrinkles with each successive story.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Two novellas and ten stories by the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin skewer the absurdities of materialism, wherein possessions substitute for meaning and power is exerted by, say, being 30 years old and refusing to leave your parents’ house.” — O Magazine, 10 Titles to Pick Up Now
“A collection of two novellas and 10 short stories from the author of the explosive “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” Set in Britain and the US, the stories explore the relationship between people, property and other “stuff.”” — New York Post, This Week’s Must-Read Books
“Award-winning Shriver’s enthusiastic audience will delight in her clever and literary analyses of the spaces we occupy, and how they’re all too often no broader than a knife’s edge.” — Booklist
O Magazine
Two novellas and ten stories by the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin skewer the absurdities of materialism, wherein possessions substitute for meaning and power is exerted by, say, being 30 years old and refusing to leave your parents’ house.
Associated Press
Shriver... is a brilliant satirist and virtuosic writer....even if Property isn’t your dream house, it’s a diverting enough place to spend an afternoon or two.
Booklist
Award-winning Shriver’s enthusiastic audience will delight in her clever and literary analyses of the spaces we occupy, and how they’re all too often no broader than a knife’s edge.
New York Post
A collection of two novellas and 10 short stories from the author of the explosive “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” Set in Britain and the US, the stories explore the relationship between people, property and other “stuff.”
Booklist
Award-winning Shriver’s enthusiastic audience will delight in her clever and literary analyses of the spaces we occupy, and how they’re all too often no broader than a knife’s edge.
New York Post
A collection of two novellas and 10 short stories from the author of the explosive “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” Set in Britain and the US, the stories explore the relationship between people, property and other “stuff.”
Associated Press Staff
Shriver... is a brilliant satirist and virtuosic writer....even if Property isn’t your dream house, it’s a diverting enough place to spend an afternoon or two.
BookReporter
[Property] places its eponymous subject—how we acquire it, use and often contend over it—under a powerful microscope. Moving gracefully from one side of the Atlantic to the other, these incisive stories are noteworthy for Shriver’s keen, if often unsparing, assessment of how we relate to the things we own, their bite leavened by her cool wit and silky smooth prose.
People
In this wickedly clever collection, Shriver lays bare our foibles when it comes to ownership of all kinds. What happens when a woman’s male best friend marries? What are the rules of engagement for houseguests, subletters, homeowners, the newly divorced? These keenly observed stories are so honest about money it’s almost shocking.
The Guardian
Shriver is a virtuoso at describing what it is to be uncomfortable in one’s own skin…. Her stories are filled with irony and psychological shafts of light. She understands the oddity of what it is to possess…. [and] has the gift for making one instantly curious, entertained, involved and ready to move in – no matter what the property.
JUNE 2018 - AudioFile
At first, author-narrator Lionel Shriver (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) may sound laconic, but the persevering listener will be rewarded by this striking collection. Bookended by two novellas and with a passel of short stories in between, this audiobook is packed. Shriver proves herself a narrator who knows when to inflect her words and mimic her characters’ cadences to reveal their inner and outer lives. The theme of property—both stuff as well as occupation or ownership of places—connects these works like ornaments on a single string. Her spare but engaging reading makes these varied stories engaging and meaningful. The novellas, THE STANDING CHANDELIER and THE SUBLETTER, demonstrate the author’s ability to show people warts and all yet captivate the listener. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-02-06
A dozen stories about homeownership, cohabitation, and other domestic perils, suffused to various degrees with Shriver's (The Mandibles, 2016, etc.) political concerns.The Standing Chandelier, the stellar novella that opens this collection, concerns Jillian, a bright but eccentric middle-aged artist who's longtime best friends with Weston—until he gets engaged to Paige, who resents Jillian's invasiveness (symbolized by the quirky wedding gift of the title) and demands he cut her off. The story recalls Shriver at her best (i.e., 2007's The Post-Birthday World): keenly alert to interior matters of jealousy, romance, and friendship and exterior matters of manners and decorum. The entire collection is unified by the question of how new arrangements, be they via marriage or a house, change or reveal our personalities, though none of the stories quite matches the opener. A few are irony-rich satires about contemporary living: In "Negative Equity," a married couple splits up but are loath to find new homes while their current one is underwater; in "Paradise to Perdition," an embezzler finds life on the lam at a tropical resort is duller than he'd hoped for. But in recent years, Shriver has become something of a scold in both her essays and fiction about what she sees as our overly sensitive, gumption-impaired society, and a handful of these stories are effectively chastising op-eds. "The ChapStick" is a critique of the Transportation Security Administration told via a man hastening to reach his dying father; in "Domestic Terrorism" (note the overheated title), a couple is at a loss about what to do about their layabout son, a vehicle for much grousing about shiftless millennials; and the closing novella, The Subletter, sourly and clunkily likens the lives of two women writers with the warring factions during Ireland's Troubles.Few writers are so committed to using fiction to explore the intimate impact of formal regulations and informal social engineering, but it remains a hit-and-miss project.
