The New Republic

The New Republic

By Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver's 2012 novel, The New Republic, is actually a problematic manuscript with a checkered history. Originally penned in the late 1990s, this psychological novel about terrorism was dismissed by American publishers as too jejune for American readers. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the proceeding years of earnest introspection (at least among literary circles) an ironic take on terrorism and journalism continued to frighten off publishers, until recently. Apparently the social and political climate of 2012 was ripe for an unabashed satire on media sensationalism and terrorism. In the meticulous Shriver style, there are no psychological tables left unflipped and no sociological surfaces left unswiped. Having recently finished Shriver's Orange-Prize winning novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, and loving it, I desperately wanted to love this novel as well. Alas, I didn't. But it's not all bad.

The New Republic is set in the fictional state of Barba, a drab, beard-like (Barba... get it?) appendage of land that extends into the Atlantic Ocean off Portugal's southern coast. Barba has recently become a European hotbed of terrorism under the guise of a paramilitary group known as the SOB – a radical terrorist cell fighting for Barban autonomy from Portugal and claiming responsibility for a seemingly random series of violent international attacks. Due to the rash of attention, foreign correspondents from the world's major media sources have descended on this European backwater previously known only for its unceasing gale-force winds, its tacky souvenir production industry and the hairy pear, a local fruit that is every bit as unappetizing as it sounds.

The foreign correspondents form a Greek chorus of media personalities (or lack thereof. Shriver's two-dimensional take on the members of the foreign press is rife with meaning), producing tired examinations, reasonings and rationales for the violence in lieu of any hard reporting on the ground. Joining this murder of squawking crows is Edgar Kellogg. Kellogg is a greenhorn journalist sent to Barba to replace Barrington Saddler, a larger-than-life personality who has gone missing and who may or may not have a lot more to do with the SOB than simply writing about them.

But the entire point of The New Republic isn't the narrative so much as the themes it illustrates, sometimes in bold relief. Shriver, obviously, takes aim at the notion of modern terrorism and the manner in which it is reported to illogical extremes but this novel is really about charisma. Why some people have it and others don't and what drives people who don't have charisma to emulate and ultimately turn on those who do have it. In this vein, Shriver is disappointingly predictable. Kellogg recounts the story of why he has quit his Manhattan law firm to become a journalist. He is determined to follow in the footsteps of his charismatic prep school friend with whom he hasn't spoken in decades. Turns out that his friend has grown up to become a milquetoast sycophant for the Daily Record newspaper and possesses none of the self-assurance that he possessed in school. This was like discovering the butler killed Lady Butterbum in the conservatory on page 12 of a 400 page book. You'd think Edgar would learn his lesson right there before shipping off to a european hellhole, but apparently Edgar isn't that bright. Diligently, Shriver trudges on and, lo and behold, exactly what she says will happen in the beginning actually happens at the end.

Predictability is certainly a problem, but my real problem with The New Republic was the characterization of Shriver's have-not anti-hero, Edgar Kellogg. Kellogg is simply irritating. He's blunt, rude and completely devoid of charisma. Furthermore, he seems to lack class, tact and common sense. He's also arrogant, haughty and condescending. He's incapable of hiding his true feelings and utterly incompetent at his job. I could go on, but you get the picture. Needless to say Edgar is a bastard.

While I understand that Shriver is attempting an examination of charisma and needed a character that was indeed lacking in it, but Kellogg is so relentlessly devoid of any emotions ascribed to charisma that he almost ceases to exist in any sort of reality understood by the reader. How does someone like Kellogg even ingratiate themselves enough with anyone to discover their lack of charisma? I wouldn't give Edgar 15 minutes before standing up and walking out on him.

By way of explanation, Edgar was once a morbidly obese kid and, though he lost the weight, he never lost the inferiority complex. Fair enough, I suppose. Consequently, Edgar has awkwardly shifted into adulthood with an acute sense of both entitlement and disdain for those around him. Why shouldn't he have what others have? He deserves it more than they do, anyway. In that respect he had transferred his personal self-loathing onto everyone else. That's some serious pop psychology right there.

In literary terms, this makes Edgar not so much a character but a caricature. He is, like the blathering idiot reporters at the local Barban watering hole, a predictable cartoon cut-out of what would happen if someone had zero charisma superimposed on a novel along side the world's most charismatic correspondent. This makes The New Republic a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is less novel and more a psychological and sociological diatribe.

Which is why the novel, as a whole, fails to impress. Don't get me wrong, Lionel Shriver's acute understanding of her subject matter is apparent, especially on the subject of terrorism and the media and the elements that would be used with such effect in We Need to Talk About Kevin are manifest throughout. Furthermore, the writing is, at times, sublime and, at points, this novel can be scathingly funny. But it lacks in any real movement, drags on so unnecessarily through the middle and leaves the reader with a rather cop out ending. Unfortunately, the strong qualities of this novel only made this reader feel cheated out of what could have been an extremely poignant book.

As it stands, it simply feels like a novel that should have remained right where Lionel Shriver left it in 1998... taking up a few megabytes of space on an out-dated hard drive. Perhaps the publishers were right the first time. Perhaps we didn't really need The New Republic.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

We Need To Talk About Kevin

By Lionel Shriver

I've been putting this book off for years. No real reason why. I've wanted to read it for ages. But the imminent publication of Shriver's new novel The New Republic, and the prospect of reviewing it in May (stay tuned) gave me the needed motivation to finally pick this novel up. And I'm kicking myself for not doing so earlier.

We Need to Talk About Kevin reminded me, in a lot of ways of Bret Easton Ellis's classic novel American Psycho. As with American Psycho, We Need To Talk About Kevin is a meticulous study of modern American antipathy and sociopathy. But unlike American Psycho, which delves so deep into the antisocial behaviors of disturbed protagonist Patrick Bateman that it remains unclear whether the events described in the novel actually occur or simply remain imbedded in Bateman's disturbed mind, Shriver's narrative paints an all too real portrait of modern American psychosis. Shriver's writing is razor sharp (though sometimes overwrought and overdone) and many a salient point is made about how and why these shooting continue to occur.

What I think sets We Need to Talk About Kevin apart from Ellis's novel is the manner in which Shriver uses characterization to sharpen the focus rather than blur the lines of what goes on in the head of a killer (or potential killer). Where Ellis clouds the reader with disturbing imagery and demented ideas, Shriver imbues us with anecdotal evidence from the mother of the killer. And while we cannot take everything the narrator says at face value, certainly some of what she says has inherent value in deconstructing Kevin's mind. And with Eva Katchadourian, Kevin mother, Shriver has created a character every bit as nuanced as Patrick Bateman. And she's not even the killer.

Kevin is an angry kid. He's been angry since the day he was born, or so says his mother, Eva, the narrator of this story. We Need to Talk About Kevin is organized as a series of letters from Eva to her estranged husband, Franklin, two years after Kevin killed eight students, a teacher and a cafeteria worker. The novel is both shocking and insightful that addresses many of the overarching causes of such shootings, including anti-social behavior, dismissive parenting, over-parenting, neglect and middle-class malaise, among others.

In her letters, Eva examines her relationship with Franklin, their subsequent decision to have a child and the years leading up to their son's killing spree. However, Eva is the very definition of the "unreliable narrator." She is over-analytical, selfish, judgmental and completely lacking in self-pity (ironically, these are the same qualities that she professes to abhor about the "typical American"). On the one hand, these qualities provide the reader (and Franklin, presumably) with a stark, brutally honest account of what she thinks occurred it is not difficult to see where Kevin developed many of his character traits. As the old proverb goes: The apples doesn't fall far from the tree.

Naturally, Eva asks the inevitable questions: Why did he do it? and How much are her and Franklin to blame? Was Kevin born bad? Or was it that Eva? Was it that Franklin's bygone/never-was 1950s, Ward Cleaver version of fatherhood? Or was it simply that once Eva began to see a trend, she couldn't stop seeing it, in a sense concocting a personal conspiracy theory between herself, her husband and Kevin? 

We delve deep into the darkest places within Eva as she sorts through these difficult questions and despite her failures as a parent, we find ourselves deeply concerned for her well-being and sympathetic to her situation. Considering the way in which we tend to vilify the parents of school shooters so instantaneously via television news, it seems essential that someone would come along and deconstruct the proverbial post-game show from the perspective of the parents. And with all due respect to Shriver's characters it is Eva who shines in this novel. It is her honesty, her selfishness and her lack of empathy that make Eva one of the strongest, most fascinating characters in modern American literature.

While We Need to Talk About Kevin isn't going to answer all the questions, but of course, why should it? It is, however, taking its place alongside American Psycho as one of the great American novels of the past twenty years and is a novel worthy of great praise.