Review: Property (A Collection) by Lionel Shriver (2018)

I know this says more about me than the designer but when I saw the cover to Lionel Shriver’s debut short fiction all I saw was this:

I’m not even sorry.

Lionel Shriver has taken some flak in recent years for her stance that fiction should be written by anyone and about anyone regardless of either parties’ personal or cultural backgrounds. I mean, there’s a bit more nuance to it than that but I’m not going into that here. What I will say is while I do support an author’s decision to write about whoever they want, that doesn’t mean that I’ll enjoy the work regardless.

I’m also not sure if Lionel Shriver is aware that there is a difference between social commentary and “lol trigger the libtards”, and some of these stories do seem to serve little purpose than to exercise her right to write from the perspectives of other people, regardless of the quality of the result.

‘The Mandibles’ was one of the best dystopia novels I read this year, and it contained a shit-tonne of social commentary and motifs. Most of these were done pretty well and

I honestly wished it was longer so we could see the chaos continue to unfold.

Anyway, on to ‘Property’!

‘Property’ can’t seem to introduce one character without letting you know what their political stance is, or what newspaper they read in one UK-based story. Finger very much on the cultural pulse there.

‘Domestic Terrorism’ sticks out amongst the short stories for being a piece of social commentary that actually is given space to breathe and is interwoven into the narrative.

Family dynamics between parents and the nebulously-defined and much-maligned ‘millennial’ are bluntly presented alongside the instantaneous and reactionary powers of social media and politics in general over the last decade.

For almost every other offering here, it’s like Shriver was so anxious to fit the themes into so few pages that she did so regardless of how the stories would suffer. And some of them really do.

What I like about Shriver is her ability to write these abrasive characters who have their well-off delusions of sanctity smashed by the various blind cruelties of life.

The short story format doesn’t really allow her to pull these off as well as she does in her novels.

Conflict is largely limited to arguments between people that read like preludes to larger payoffs that never come.

The exceptions are the two novellas that bookend the collection.

‘The Standing Chandelier’ has room to breathe and show two not-lover protagonists letting their relationship atrophy, with the titular chandelier being a fantastically presented metaphor for a waste of time.

‘The Subletter’ uses the backdrop of 1990s Belfast to illuminate the turmoil between a live-in landlord and a tenant lacking in social graces to great effect.

If ‘Property’ was a collection of these sorts of novellas, it would be much improved. Shriver excels at cutting off her protagonists’ layers and letting the wounds scar over across many pages.

“The Self-Seeding Sycamore” is severely out of date, reading like a casserole of BBC America highlights. People judging one another over newspaper choices, arguments about shrubbery and regular viewings of Downton Abbey. The plot is the aching cliché of  two seemingly-incompatible neighbours striking up a relationship and discovering they’re not so different.

‘The Royal Male’ is about five pages long I suspect is a scene cut from a longer piece.

‘The Chapstick’ presents the immortal moral “don’t be a dick to airport security”.

‘Vermin’s an effective little piece that shows the deterioration of a property alongside a crumbling marriage.

‘Possession’ is a fun ghost story that runs with the idea of property becoming an extension of one’s personality and takes it to its logical conclusion. In this case, this is a haunted house.

When ‘Property’ works, it reads like it should, bite-sized Shriver. 

When it doesn’t, it reads like a thinly-reworked opinion column or a chunk of a larger aborted work.

Calling it a “Collection” is spot on. It's like an assortment of disparate items collected over a long period of time; the equivalent of emptying one’s kitchen junk drawer.

It’s packed with items that mean a lot to the right people, I’m sure. 

But not to me.

6/10