We Need to Talk About Lionel (Shriver)

Lionel Shriver wrote her latest novel, The New Republic, before the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and, according to the book’s foreword, held it back until both her sales record and the public appetite for a terrorism-themed satire increased. Her first stroke of good fortune came swiftly when her 2003 novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, a school-massacre thriller that arrived a tasteful distance after the 1999 killings at Columbine High School, became a mega-hit and, eventually, a film starring Tilda Swinton. As for a public willingness to chuckle at anything terrorism-related, a decade would seem to suffice for the old mantra about tragedy plus time yielding comedy. The problem for Ms. Shriver is that the first wave of terrorism black comedy must necessarily have a sharpness, and a sense of gravity and for the facts on the ground that The New Republic utterly lacks.