A Perfectly Good Family

By: Lionel Shriver

Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward

Following the success of We Need to Talk About Kevin this is a stunning examination of inheritance, literal and psychological: what we take from our parents, what we discard, and what we are stuck with, like it or not.

After having escaped for years to London, Corlis McCrea returns to the grand Reconstruction mansion where she grew up in North Carolina, now willed to the three grown children following the death of their parents. All three want the house.

Fiscal necessity dictates that two must buy a third out. Just as she was torn as a girl, the sister must choose between her decent younger brother and the renegade eldest—the black sheep who covets his legacy in order to destroy it. The adult siblings re-enact the deep enmities and loyalties of childhood, as each bids for a bigger slice of the pie.

Critic reviews

Praise for Lionel Shriver:

‘One of the most magnetically compelling writers working today. Witty, caustic and worldly’ WALL STREET JOURNAL

‘A brilliant writer. She has a strong, clear and strangely seductive voice. The characters are strong . . . so moving it will make you want to gasp or cry’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Shriver is an incisive social satirist with a clear grip on the ironies of our contemporary age’
LA Times