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    Big Brother: A Novel
    Big Brother: A Novel
    Big Brother: A Novel
    Audiobook13 hours

    Big Brother: A Novel

    Written by Lionel Shriver

    Narrated by Alice Rosengard

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Big Brother is a striking novel about siblings, marriage, and obesity from Lionel Shriver, the acclaimed author the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin.
     
    For Pandora, cooking is a form of love. Alas, her husband, Fletcher, a self-employed high-end cabinetmaker, now spurns the “toxic” dishes that he’d savored through their courtship, and spends hours each day to manic cycling. Then, when Pandora picks up her older brother Edison at the airport, she doesn’t recognize him. In the years since they’ve seen one another, the once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds. What happened? After Edison has more than overstayed his welcome, Fletcher delivers his wife an ultimatum: It’s him or me.

    Rich with Shriver’s distinctive wit and ferocious energy, Big Brother is about fat: an issue both social and excruciatingly personal. It asks just how much sacrifice we'll make to save single members of our families, and whether it's ever possible to save loved ones from themselves.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJun 4, 2013
    ISBN9780062263186
    Author

    Lionel Shriver

    Although Lionel Shriver has published many novels, a collection of essays, and a column in the Spectator since 2017, and her journalism has been featured in publications including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, she in no way wishes for the inclusion of this information to imply that she is more “intelligent” or “accomplished” than anyone else. The outdated meritocracy of intellectual achievement has made her a bestselling author multiple times and accorded her awards, including the Orange Prize, but she accepts that all of these accidental accolades are basically meaningless. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Big Brother

    3.5/5

    350 ratings49 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the way this book investigated the responsibilities of family and the uncertainty, confusion and regret that often accompanies our best intentions. How do we help? Are we enabling? What sort of boundaries are reasonable? What can we actually control about the life of another person? The story itself felt a little rough, the dialogue clunky in many spots, but I was able to forgive some of these things as I finished the book (and you'll understand why if you read it).
    • 3/5
      Pandora is a successful businesswoman, married to Fletcher and step mother to his two children. In the last few years Fletcher has become a health nut, heavily into cycling. Meanwhile Pandora loves to cook and once ran her own catering business so Fletcher's aversion to food is getting on her nerves.Pandora's brother Edison is a jazz musician and when she learns he's been experiencing a run of bad luck she agrees to let him stay with her family for a while. When Pandora arrives at the airport to pick him up she's shocked to find her once handsome brother is now morbidly obese and can barely walk.Fletcher (health fanatic) and Edison (foodaholic) inevitably clash and what ensues is a fascinating look at family dynamics, social etiquette and relationship loyalties.I was gripped by the characters and the plot although there was an overload of jazz content at times, forgivable because it's all Edison talks about. Lionel Shriver had me in the palm of her hand until an unexpected turn towards the last quarter of the novel.Without spoiling it, the change in direction left this reader feeling betrayed and a little cross. Would I recommend Big Brother to other readers after this? Maybe not, but am I glad I read it? Definitely. This swing in my enjoyment levels makes it hard for me to give Big Brother a star rating, but I've settled on 'good read', three stars.
    • 4/5
      Aside from an ending that feels a little like a cheat, I enjoyed reading this novel. I was sometimes incredulous about the way it progressed, which I suppose makes sense given the ending, but there were still bits that struck me as true (in the sense of emotional truth, not factual accuracy). One of these moments comes in chapter ten or Part I (p 138 in the hardcover I read):"This sounds idiotic, but every time I encounter a picture of myself I am shocked to have been seen. I do not, under normal circumstances, feel seen. When I walk down the street, my experience is of looking. Manifest to myself in the ethereal privacy of my head, I grow alarmed when presented with evidence of my public body."I don't know how commonplace this is, but I certainly relate to it. I think this was the main thing I disliked about being pregnant, this sense that I was more noticeable than I am usually. Of course, I'm always visible, I always enact with the world via my physical body, but during pregnancy I seemed to become a kind of community property about which strangers were invited to comment. Whether it was the hip couple in the Whole Foods who pushed their cart into my backside when my belly caused me to extend too far into the aisle while I was browsing the spice selection or the well-meaning woman (women, actually) who said gravely, "Are you sure it's not twins?" people's reactions made it impossible to trick myself into thinking I was invisible.I'm a fairly small person---not necessarily slender, but little. For example, when the dentist takes impressions of my teeth, she needs to use a child-sized tray, and I have trouble finding contact lenses that feel comfortable because my irises are small. I'm accustomed to being overlooked, unseen, or at least I feel like I am overlooked and unseen. When I'm "presented with evidence of my public body," I, too, grow alarmed. It's as though someone in a movie I'm watching suddenly began interacting with me. Well, maybe not quite that alarming, but still unsettling.Another idea that feels true to me is woven throughout the novel, but appears overtly at the end of chapter one in Part II:"It wasn't that eating was so great---it wasn't---but that nothing was great. Eating being merely okay still put it head and shoulders above everything else that was decidedly less than okay." (190)Food is necessary for survival, so we can't give it up entirely like we might smoking or gambling, which, even with as difficult as complete abstention is, would still be easier than eating enough but not too much, needing both to be wary of and to embrace food. It's difficult to put our attention on the relationship between food and the shape of our bodies and not obsess. It's difficult to separate food as physical nourishment from food as spiritual, social, and emotional nourishment. It's difficult, but I think it makes sense. When an infant is nursing from his mother or being held in arms and taking a bottle, he's receiving not just food but also comfort and an emotional nourishment without which he would not thrive. I remember looking into my nursling's eyes intent upon mine and thinking how miraculous it was that this loving closeness also gave her food. I think that conflating of food and attachment, food and love, food and unconditional acceptance must be hard-wired into us. Perhaps when one gets out of balance, we feel a need to compensate with the other.
    • 3/5
      It was longer than it needed to be but the story was interesting.
    • 3/5
      Engaging, Until It Isn't

      Martial love vs. sibling ties. Compulsion vs. control. Enjoyment vs. addiction. Life vs. death. These are among the issues that present themselves in Shriver's well-written and paced novel on the human plight, and another addition to novels featuring obesity. Shriver keeps things moving along and interesting until the final twenty pages or so.

      Big Brother involves a not always pleasant jazz pianist older brother, Edison, who comes to visit his successful sister, Pandora, in Iowa. He shocks her by appearing not as his sleek self, the brother she remembered, but as a nearly unrecognizable, almost four hundred pound man. His extended stay of two months, between tours, you know, stresses and strains the family. In particular, the prickly, retentive, and diet-conscious husband, who busies himself fashioning arty and delicate furniture, takes immediate offense and dislike of Edison. The disruption puts husband and wife at odds. The children, Tanner and Cody, take to Edison in their very different ways, Tanner's not manifest till later in the story. Divorce raises its head when Pandora resolves to act as live-in coach to help Edison get down to his normal weight of one sixty-three. This is all good, filled with plenty of ups and downs, frustrations and triumphs, humor and despair, and the kind of ending that pays off your trek with the pair and the family into the victory lap.

      Then you come to the conclusion, signaled by a transitional development at the end of Edison's celebratory party. Without disclosing what the end is, you wonder why Shriver chose to wrap things up as she does. Yes, it is understandable. Guilt and impossibility and realism come to mind. Yet, there could have been a better way, one more integrated into the story that would have produced much more satisfying results.

      At the top were mentioned novels featuring obesity. The first and the best is Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins. Attenberg concerns herself with the effect of a mother's over eating on her immediate and extended family. It’s brilliant excursion into family relations gone awry. The other is David Whitehouse's Bed. A man decides to rebel against convention, to go out not as obscure but as the fattest man ever. Whip smart writing but essentially vacant in the end.
    • 1/5
      I couldn't decide if I liked this book or not until the last chapter, at which point swear words were issued and the book was thrown.

      This book is weighed down by 2 intractable problems from the outset.

      One, it is a statement about a Very Serious Issue. Shriver unfortunately chooses the heavy handed path of telling you all about the Very Serious Issue, including 3 pages of pop psychoanalysis of how people are perceived according to their weight. The entire book is weighed down, pardon the pun, by its need to make a statement about Americans and their relationship to food. It lectures, rather than shows.

      Two, the book is too obviously a means of catharsis for Shriver. While it's difficult to judge works by their authors, she's made enough statements about her brother and his death and how it relates to the novel.

      There's a fundamental dishonesty at the core of the book. It is written by someone who thinks she has sympathy for the overweight and obese, but nonetheless chooses to load her character with clichés about them. Edison eats Pandora out of house and home; he breaks furniture; he's an addictive personality who eats compulsively. For her part, Pandora chooses to indulge the fantasy of saving her obese brother from himself.

      That is, until the ending. Shriver chooses to deal with the impossible plot she's outlined by handing the reader a hearty "fuck you, the last 150 pages were a lie." She's left herself no way out, but it's no less of a cheat.

      The problem? A great deal of the book is well written, although the constant passages about food can be a bit much. The characters are interesting. But the flaw at the heart of the book torpedoes it for me.
    • 4/5
      Big Brother is a novel that requires the reader to stretch their imagination and incredulity as its plot is centered on Pandora and her older brother, Edison, a down on his luck Brooklyn-based jazz pianist who she hasn't seen in several years. When she pays for him to visit her in Iowa he is unrecognizably obese, having gained hundreds of pounds. Edison is not only morbidly overweight, he is also a horribly inconsiderate house guest, buying and consuming inordinate amounts of food, creating a mess, and breaking a prized piece of home-made furniture crafted by Fletcher, Pandora's husband, who despises Edison. Only Cody, Pandora's teenage step daughter finds Edison redeemable. Big Brother ponders the nature of food and the role it plays, dieting, family life, work life, exercise, nutrition, and the psychological complexities of modern living and dysfunction. The first section of the book maps Edison's arrival and how he utterly complicates Pandora's neat little nuclear family. The second section is like an episode of The Biggest Loser where Pandora and Edison move into a small nearby apartment with the goal of getting Edison to his normal weight (and she shedding a few extra pounds) within a year. The final section, which has a plot twist that some readers may find unsatisfying, is the coda. Big Brother is the first book that I have read as part of a "book club." A friend suggested it and a few friends will eventually gather to discuss it. There is plenty of grist to chew on. It's a pretty breezy read, not heavy, but in the end, I think even the author felt it was just too far fetched to believe.
    • 3/5
      Not my favorite Shriver book, Big Brother Edison was annoying as hell, the details of anyone's diet are dull as can be and the toy factory, egads. It was easy enough to keep listening to the audio version while I worked but had I READ this book with this ending? I would have ripped it in half and thrown it across the room.
    • 2/5
      Strange, unrealistic story of a woman who appears to put her life and marriage on hold to help her morbidly obese brother as he attempts to lose weight. Not an uplifting story, even as fiction. Interesting, though.
    • 5/5
      This is the 3rd novel I have read by Shriver and they have all been excellent. She has a great way with words and she takes an important topic and builds her book around it. In this case it is eating on both the obesity and the strict food intake side. Both extremes are examined in this very entertaining book. In addition to the food issue, Shriver gets into sibling, marital, step-children, parents, and friend relationships. She deals with L.A. versus Iowa. The basic story has Pandora a successful entrepreneur who has a marriage to Fletcher that is 7 years old and comes with 17 and 13 year old children. They live in Iowa. Into her life comes her jazz piano playing brother Edison who she hasn't seen for 4 years. They are close because of their upbringing with a TV star father. Turns out Edison has gained over 200 pounds since she last saw him and is having a hard economic downturn. Fletcher is a food fanatic and avid cyclist who makes custom furniture that doesn't sell. The clash between the obese Edison and Fletcher is one of the many stories in this book. Shriver does a great job of making it all work while also making an important statement about our relationship to food. This book helped me realize that as a reader we always tend to question the plausibility of plot lines in novels. Especially, if it is going to be a reasonable tale. This book did stretch my belief that all of the actions could occur, but then I realize that this is fiction and the higher purpose of this book was achieved through Shriver's plot. There is a twist at the end that many people had trouble with. For me it did not impact the overall value of the book. Shriver is a great writer that deals with big issues. If you have not read anything by her, then this is a good place to start.
    • 3/5
      Big Brother It's hard to know what to say about a book in which the author is so obviously laying out her own personal issues. (As described here.) I can't help but wonder if she would have been better off just talking about some of this with a therapist. It's an interesting (if odd) book, not badly written, but some of the characters who are supposed to be attractive and sympathetic just seem like asses. And the author seems to want us to approve of the protagonist's unkind, even punitive treatment of her brother--which makes some psychological sense given the backstory, but very little sense within the world of the novel.
    • 3/5
      SO, I really, really liked this book. Until the end. I'm not sure why the author chose to go that way with the ending (I won't spoil it), but it changed my outlook on the entire book.

      Really well written, but it lost me in Part 3.
    • 3/5
      I found the set-up so artificial that it was harder for me to get into the story than any of her other novels I've read. Sometimes things would happen -- capital of which is the siblings moving in together -- that I just couldn't believe, and that jerked me out of the story. She always brought me back, but it was a tougher road than I expected. So, I also felt jerked out of the story by the "twist." And I completely agree with other reviewers about the narrator being a light sketch of Shriver herself. All that said, I didn't dislike the book. There were so many tidbits of philosophy, not to mention that the way characters interact with each other (in this and all of her books) is so compelling and real to me. I would not recommend Big Brother over others of her books, but I still am glad I read it.
    • 4/5
      Prior to this I’d only read two books by Shriver and I don’t remember much of either of them, especially any authorial chicanery which is a big part of how this book ends. I think it was the polarizing effect of that which kept me from reading it for so long. It makes sense to be written that way even though as a reader I said “really, she’s doing this to me?”. She has some spot-on things to say about being fat in America. Mostly that even though the average heft just keeps going up, fat folks are basically written off as bad or defective; a product of their own weak wills or gluttony. They’re not seen as anything but fat and that’s pretty sad. I was fully engaged in the story though, so I’ll give her that much. Implausible as it was, I often like reading about people who make choices I would never make in a million years. When it comes to putting up with bullshit I’m remarkably heartless. I don’t care who you are; if you’re a jerk and taking advantage of me you’re done. Not so Pandora. She lets Big Brother walk all over her. Granted, the way Fletcher was portrayed didn’t make me want to be married to him either, but it’s fiction so I let it go. As a person who could stand to lose a few pounds, I live with the problem of not being able to shed extra pounds. I’ve done it before but previous methods aren’t working now and I’m at a loss. The thing is, my extra 15 hasn’t made me an asshole nor did losing it a couple of years ago magically make me a saint. That’s kind of how Edison is characterized in the book. Oh sure, Shriver takes some pains to tell us that Fletcher has ALWAYS hated him and even Pandora grudgingly admits her brother is a boastful windbag who doesn’t get off his fat ass for anything except pork rinds. But then as he sheds the fat, Edison also sheds his selfishness, sloppiness, need to name drop, self-pity and unwillingness to work a straight job. It’s insulting and if she did it to add to the verisimilitude of the whole Edison loses weight story, I get it.Bottom line is it’s fantasy. Edison doesn’t lose any weight. Neither does Pandora. It’s a complete parallel of the whole diet industry which makes money hand over fist despite something like a 90% failure rate. It’s sad and quite true, but told with the smugness of a thin person. A person who has always been thin and has no real fear of that ever changing. Granted, Shriver had a brother who died from obesity complications, but that isn’t the same as having your body betray you and then not respond to a single thing you try to do about it. As a story it works though and I wasn’t overly offended by the smug.
    • 3/5
      This would be a good selection for a book club, there are endless topics for discussion: America’s weight obsession, the diet industry, nutrition, addiction, family dynamics, marriage, etc. I wish someone had been reading it at the same time with me so that we could discuss it. (“Can you believe she did that?! She’s freakin crazy!!”) My book club would balk at the length, but if you take into account that much of the second part is repetitive, it’s not really that long.

      As always, Shriver’s writing is excellent, her descriptions are elegant and incisive…. However, it felt like something was “off” with the story, it really stretched suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. Not to spoil it, but you find out why at the very end. To be perfectly blunt - it is a plot device that I hate and it makes me feel like the author has violated some sort of contract with the reader. (If you’ve read Atonement by Ian McEwan you’ll know what I’m talking about – that was another book that made me want to hurl it against a wall.)
    • 5/5
      Big Brother by Lionel Shriver again focuses on today's current headlines/obsessions. This time it is a family's destructive relationship with food. Pandora was a caterer. Now married to Fletcher, she cooks to show love. Her brother, Edison, is using food to ease his pain and has gained hundreds of pounds."

      Pandora is also a successful owner of a start-up business and even while she downplays her accomplishments, they are truly remarkable. Her husband, Fletcher, has become a health-consumed food Nazi and compulsive exercise junkie who makes handmade furniture in their basement, most of which he is unable to sell. Adding to this already potentially stressful marital situation are Fletcher's two teenagers and a visit from Pandora's now morbidly obese brother, Edison. Even while Pandora is cracking under the strict disciplines her husband wants to live under, she views Edison's life without rules as a cry for help.

      While the subject matter may make people squirm and look over their shoulder in the mirror or jump on that scale one more time, the issues Shriver raises and brings to our attention in this intelligent, very timely novel are worth the price some of us might pay in discomfort.

      I've lived with a food Nazi and the rules they want to impose on everyone around them is simply a way for them to strive to control other people. It doesn't work and will always cause dissension in the ranks. On the other hand, Edison's incredible girth is undeniably unhealthy. But the real question is can you truly help your family by trying to control them or their behavior even if you are doing it for all the right reasons? And beyond that can anyone control the behavior of others?
      Shriver wrote an article about body image: Warning: I Will Employ the Word 'Fat

      "A complex, conflicted relationship to the body isn’t the exclusive preserve of the overweight. To a modest extent, we can control its contours and influence its functionality, but in the main the body is a card we’ve been arbitrarily dealt. Looking in the mirror, we both recognize ourselves and don’t. Are we what we see? What unpleasant surprises about our true natures will emerge when the body falters from illness, age, or accident? Whatever our sizes, in time the body will betray us all. Thus it’s in everyone’s interest to maintain a sharp distinction between, as my narrator in Big Brother puts it, “the who” and “the what.” "

      Yet, again, Shriver's use of language leaves me humbled and admiring. She always uses the exact word to say or describe her scenes or characters. Have you ever, like me, muttered while writing, "No, that's not the word I want - it's like that word but that's not it..."and struggled trying to get the exact word you are searching for untangled from your mind? Lionel Shriver is an incredibly gifted wordsmith. Add that talent to her story telling ability and it leaves me in awe. This may not have been my all-time favorite Lionel Shriver novel, but it is most certainly very highly recommended.

      Disclosure:I received my advanced reading copy from the publisher and TLC for review purposes.
    • 3/5
      Well written, interesting and original. I would have rated the book higher but for the ending, which was, in my opinion, a bit of a cheat.
    • 4/5
      "There has to be more to life than food and drink",, 24 July 2015This review is from: Big Brother (Paperback)When Pandora - chubby forty-something, married to a grumpy health freak, and stepmother to his two teenagers - welcomes her big brother on a visit, she isn't prepared for the changes in him. After four years, the formerly good-looking jazz musician has become chronically obese, and his life and career have gone down the pan.With husband Fletcher's increasing disgust at Edison's eating habits and untidiness, Pandora has to decide whether she should put her brother first and sacrifice her marriage to help her friendless sibling...This was an enjoyable read, but one that makes the reader think about the wave of obesity sweeping the West today:"The more I chewed, the more bewildered I grew by how this fleeting, unseizable pleasure had so enslaved my countrymen that many of us were willing to disgrace ourselves for it: demoralize ourselves for it; demolish a host of other pleasures for it, like running and dancing and sex; destroy this very pleasure itself in its pursuit - for every tidbit I'd consumed since putting on weight had been contaminated with an acrid after-taste of self-reproach; and even, in extreme cases like the one my fast becoming, die for it."Expect to be surprised...
    • 4/5
      Wow, what a book. For anyone with weight issues, it gives you a lot to think about. The ending was not what I expected at all. I recommend this book.
    • 3/5
      Can't say I liked this much but then I hated "Kevin" and wouldn't have read Shriver again if it hadn't been a reading group book.She does have some interesting things to say about our obsession with food, diet and exercise. And I wondered if the twist ending was meant to point out to us how easily we are fooled by the promises of magic diets. Reality isn't like that. I was annoyed with myself that I didn't spot the clues.But as a writer she comes across as annoyingly superior - "I'm so clever compared to you stupid lot" - yeah, right.
    • 5/5
      I love Lionel Shriver novels. She always makes them more interesting than the subject matter might suggest. In this case the narrator Pandora has her brother over to stay and it turns out he’s grown monstrously fat. I would never have believed such mileage was to be had from obesity. Shriver doesn’t so much tell a story as psychoanalyse it – there is so much intelligent comment here on the business of over-eating and dieting. So many column inches in magazines have been devoted to this subject and yet here I discovered wisdom that was new – at least to me – and as someone who could do with shedding a few pounds, I took a good deal of inspiration from it.Aside from the intellectual musings, there is a good story here. The presence of the overindulgent brother drives a wedge between Pandora and her abstemious husband, and ultimately threatens her marriage. The reader is never totally sure how it will pan out. And the idea behind the narrator’s successful business was a brilliant one – I would be surprised if some entrepreneur didn’t try it for real. I would have bought one of those dolls like a shot.
    • 1/5
      Review based on ARC.

      Anyone who was around me while I was forcing my way through this book suffered for my having to finish it. Why did I have to finish it? Because it was an advanced readers' copy, and I felt like I needed to finish the whole book in order to fairly review it.

      But oh, the pain.
      So, the premise. I was interested in this book and definitely wanted to read it because of its premise! (this is no more spoiler than what appears on the back cover) Main character (Pandora) picks up her brother (Edison) from the airport after not having seen him for several years and doesn't even recognize him at first because he's gained so much weight. On top of now being a morbidly obese person, the narrator also takes issue with her brother's other developed-habits, such as breaking furniture, convincing high school kids to drop out of high school, etc. So she has to decide between her husband and her brother, which is essentially what the book is about--that choice and the repercussions thereof.

      Ok, yeah, sounds interesting! Good of her to take on a less developed theme in current literature and try to tackle the psychological reactions that people have in these types of tough situations. So I was excited.

      Then I got the book and started reading. And this is what it was like: Imagine if I told you that a very interesting special was going to be on tv, but it was only going to air once and you couldn't record it because you don't have a DVR or anything. So you are excited about the special and are eager to get to the story, but as soon as it starts playing, your roommate just gets up and stands in front of the tv and starts waxing poetic about anything and everything---his/her opinions, theories, views on politics, social issues, his/her childhood, etc. Just keeps talking. And then they finally wind down and sit down and you are watching the special again, and just as you start getting into the special, s/he gets back up again and does it all over again. Over and over and over. That's what it was like reading this book. Shriver (or, purportedly, her narrator) just could. not. shut. up. shut up. shut up. It was infuriating attempting to read the story with the narrator constantly streaming her look-how-smart-I-am consciousness. And yeah, she had a few interesting things to say and said a few things in interesting ways, but I just couldn't CARE after she just kept GOING and going and going.

      So around page 100, I decided I couldn't do it anymore. The book was literally giving me a headache and I was doing anything to avoid reading. I took a breather.

      After ~a week, I decided, no, I can finish this. And so I did. Unfortunately, not only was Shriver's writing style infuriating, but her story was a disaster. This was one of the least convincing attempts at "understanding" fat people that I've ever been confronted with. It felt like Shriver literally knew NO-ONE who had ever really struggled with a lot of weight. And I understand that her real-life brother died from morbid obesity, weighing approximately what she puts her "big brother" at in the book, but it doesn't appear as if she spent any real time with her brother or talked to anyone who's ever spent substantial time around people who struggle with this kind of weight issue.

      As someone with actual perspective here, I can assure the unknowing reader that Shriver is way off the mark. And it's offensive. And, frankly, it takes a lot to offend me. Shriver's fat guy is reckless, selfish, unaware, and stupid. Of course, because he's fat, right? It was a childish viewpoint and impossible for me to read without a scowl on my face.

      So what's extra unbelievable about this whole thing is that Edison supposedly exhibits his I'm-a-disgusting-slob person while in the house of not only an essential stranger (his brother-in-law), but also while being openly judged and loathed by said-stranger. Fat people don't do that, Ms. Shriver. But yeah, supposedly, this guy will eat powdered sugar straight from the bag, but in the process just gets powdered sugar everywhere because of course he's a slob; takes a first serving at a first meal that is more than half of a casserole so that others are left hungry because of course he's hungry, stupid, and selfish; insists on making the rest of the skinny family inordinate amounts of terribly unhealthy food because he's inconsiderate, pushy, and stupid; etc.

      And every single thing that "Pandora" (or, perhaps, really the author?) says about her brother, who she supposedly loves, comments on his fatness. Like, WE GET IT. HE's FAT. He doesn't just have a big jacket, his jacket is so big it is like carrying a sleeping bag. He doesn't just sit on furniture, he breaks it. Oh and of course he doesn't just sh**, he poops so much that there's literally poop chunks floating down the hall. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Not to mention the fact that his gaining just over 200 pounds in 4 years does not actually match up with what he supposedly eats in a day.

      And this is all just in the first half of the book, and I haven't even touched on the celebrity childhood or her famous company, which she also insists on talking about ad nauseum. At page 176, I mistakenly believed it was going to get better. Something actually changed. It wasn't just going to be 400 pages of Shriver... er, Pandora judging fat people but pretending to care about them. So narrator has to make a choice... choose her jerk of a husband or her fat disgusting slob of a brother.

      What choice does she make? How does it turn out? What're the spoilers that everyone is so carefully avoiding? Here's the non-spoiler answer: who. cares. Take it from someone who suffered through reading the whole thing... it didn't get better. It's not worth knowing. It's worse than pathetic. (if you really want the spoilers? go to bottom and highlight text to reveal)

      In sum, I would recommend this book to literally no one. I would not recommend this book to anyone who has struggled or is struggling with weight because it is unaware and offensive. I would not recommend this book to anyone who knows someone who has struggled or is struggling with weight because it is unhelpful, patronizing, and offensive. I would not recommend this book to someone who knows no one who has this kind of weight issue because it will simply give them the wrong idea about how fat people are in the so-called privacy of someone else's home. Just say no. No.

      ONE of five stars. A touch of credit can be given because she's poetic with her language.

      THE SPOILERS:

      1. she chooses her brother. and is annoying and holier-than-thou in her choice. so she moves into a separate apartment with her brother to go on a crazy crash diet with him for a year. And I mean crazy. We're talking 6 months of less than 600 calories a day. And of course no one cheats. And they lose all kinds of weight. And then they have to struggle with reintroducing food. Etc. And than jerk husband wants a divorce. And crazy fat brother is happy. But then after all the weight is lost, husband wants Pandora back and Edison loses it. and eats a chocolate cake. like the slob that he is. smearing chocolate all over his face and clothes, etc. And then gains all the weight back. All of it.

      2. But wait, Shriver thought she'd try to be clever. None of that happened. She didn't go live in an apt w/ her brother, she just let him leave. And be fat. and die.

      I mean. really? People enjoy this?
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars - it was four right up until the last section
    • 4/5
      Great writing, utterly absorbing narrative, fabulously flawed characters. I'm still not sure how I *feel* about the ending, but I like where she went with it.
    • 1/5
      in irgendeiner Rezension stand, dass dieses Buch den Umgang mit dem Essen thematisiert, dass war für mich der Auslöser, das Buch zu kaufen.Nach 190 von 583 Seiten des E-Books gebe ich auf. Die Geschichte kann mich nicht fesseln. Frau mit asketischem Ehemann nimmt extrem essgestörten, extrem übergewichtigen Bruder für 2 Monate auf. Keine Ahnung was noch daraus wird, bis Seite 190 ist es nur eine Beschreibung des Ist-Zustandes und der ist nicht wirklich interessant und die Figuren sind irgendwie blass.
    • 4/5
      I look forward to Shriver novels, her clear-sighted take on the world, and fearless honesty. The subject matter in this one is our complex relationship with food - ranging from denial anorexia to morbid obesity. Considering how central to our lives food is, I am surprised I haven't come across a novel with similar preoccupations.A large part of the novel seemed very un-Shriver-like fairy tale and wish-fulfilment, but the ending remedied this, and Shriver's own relationship with her brother which she has written about explains her need to revisit and rewrite what she did and could have done through fiction.As usual from her - a very thought-provoking read.
    • 5/5
      From the author of We need to talk about Kevin - but much more believable. Story about family relationships, the extent of our responsibilities to each other and the the writing of the story itself. Read on ebook from Waimak library.
    • 4/5
      What do you do when your beloved older brother shows up at the airport and you don't recognize him because he is morbidly obese? Do you pretend nothing has changed? Do you confront him about his weight? Do you try to figure out why he gained so much weight? Do you offer to coach him into losing weight at the risk of losing your spouse and family? If you are Pandora Halfdnarson you do all of those things in succession.Pandora and her brother Edison move into an apartment and go on a strict liquid only diet. Pandora has about 40 pounds to lose but Edison has over 200. Obviously, it is going to take Edison much longer but Pandora figures a year should be sufficient.It's rather ironic that Lionel Shriver took on obesity as the subject of this book; Shriver is thin and from what I have read she always has been. I must say that her portrayal is mostly sympathetic but there were times when I said to myself "No way." For instance, she has Edison cook for Pandora once Pandora is down to her ideal weight but Edison continues on the liquid diet and never tastes a morsel of what he cooks. I just don't think that is possible. I also didn't like the whole concept of the liquid diet because I felt it did not teach either of the dieters how to eat properly. Most people who lose weight and keep it off do it gradually and by changing their habits.Still, I enjoyed listening to this book and it even got me re-dedicated to losing weight myself.
    • 4/5
      I doubt anything will ever have the impact for me of We Need to Talk About Kevin, but Big Brother was a very good book, hard to put down, with that wonderfully arch and honest voice that I recognized from Shriver's most popular book. It is about a successful business owner whose morbidly obsese brother disrupts her life and her marriage. Pandora, whose company makes customized talking dolls that mock their recipient, is married to a slightly fussy, health conscious and conspicuously unsuccessful furniture maker when her brother Eddie, a failed jazz musician, pops in for a visit and is almost unrecognizably fat. Pandora decides, to her husband's understandable consternation, to move to an apartment with her brother and help him lose the weight.What struck me most about the book was not the issue of Fat but of Family, and how entangled we all are with family loyalties and guilt, no matter how independent and separate we suppose ourselves. I see that many readers objected to the book's ending, and for a minute I was disappointed myself, but Shriver won me over with Pandora's emotionally truthful explanation for what might pass for a narrative trick.
    • 3/5
      Lionel Shriver is a gifted author as evidenced by We Need To Talk About Kevin. Big Brother is the story of a morbidly obese man who visits his sister in Iowa after having worn out his welcome in New York with friends from his career as a jazz pianist. The first part is brilliant, the second part makes the characters less than likeable on many levels, and the third part is the abrupt reality. I am impressed with Shriver's skills as a writer, but this one cannot compare with We Need To Talk About Kevin in its plot and believability.