h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

so I read it, as did Kelli. Maybe Z also?

It was really well written, so well written that I couldn't actually stop reading it even about 2/3 of the way through when I realised that I didn't want to read any more becuase I'd worked out what happened (and was, unfortunately, correct)

So I read to the end, was thoroughly depressed afterwards and really really wish I'd never picked it up.

Anyone else?

I read it for a bookgroup about 5 years ago, and it still makes me feel angry!

I thought it was all propaganda saying that it wasn't guns that caused school shootings, it was mothers who had careers. No one else at bookgroup thought that.

Oh dear, we are all in danger of violently agreeing here.

He didn't use guns Z, so nothing to do with guns, oh no. School massacres are not caused by gun culture after all!

It was just his cold, uncaring b*tch of a mother who had the audacity to desire a career! She failed to notice that this child had been 'born bad' and correct him because she was so busy having fun away from her children.

Even before I had children I didn't think any of the bits of the book relating to their relationship were particularly convincing (I was pregnant with #1 son at the time), and since I've had them even less so.

But is was such a beautifully structured book!

Has anyone else read anything else by Lionel Shriver?

I think it was interesting because she never seemed to bond with him. Some mothers don't bond with their children, some children don't bond with their mothers, but that's never accepted in literature is it? It's not ok for a mother to say 'I never really loved my child, but it's ok, because his father loves him'

Read bits of it in French - interesting concept, and well-written in places but...

Couldn't read the whole thing, and couldn't say it was 'enjoyable'.

I liked the idea that it took on the everyone enjoys being a parent myth (even if most people do...)

sprout

oh Z I was so with you there, the book made me really really angry. And at Lionel Shriver until I realised that 'he' is a 'she'.

The father was the one who really really got my dander up though, he just stuck his fingers in his ears, left all the "children" stuff to his wife and did the "lalalalaa I can't hear you stuff"

Mind you the mother made me really mad too, for not sticking to her guns when she KNEW something was wrong but was falling for all that "mothers bond automatically with their children" carp. (I knew it was carp because for the first few weeks of #1's life, I felt like I was just on an extended babysitting stint - never mind that I'd never ever babysat in my life)

I really wonder if, apart from the actual writing and structure of the novel, anyone has anything really positive at all to take from it?

It was one of those books that I keep coming back to mentally it was haunting and provockative. I think all of those are good things, my internal life is richer for having read it.

As one of those mothers who didn't have that instant bond with my first child I agree it *isn't* something often talked about but the book very much felt like this lack of a bond was as a result of her selfishness.