Lionel Shriver A Better Life review and information of the content of new novel by the American author. Harper Collins will publish the Lionel Shriver novel on February 10, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.
Lionel Shriver A Better Life reviews
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A Better Life
- Author: Lionel Shriver (United States)
- Book type: American novel
- Publisher: Harper Collins
- To be released: February 10, 2026
- Length: 368 pages
- Format: hardback / ebook / audiobook
- Prize: $ 30.00 / $ 14.99 / $ 27.99
- Order book from: Amazon / Bol
Blurb of the new Lionel Shriver novel
In a provocative novel addressing contemporary immigration by the sharply observant Lionel Shriver, a New York family takes in a Honduran migrant—who may or may not be the innocent paragon she claims to be.
Gloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her 26-year-old son Nico in a sprawling house in Brooklyn, decides to participate in a new city program that would pay her to take in a migrant as a boarder. Gloria is thrilled when sweet, kind, helpful Martine arrives. But Nico is skeptical. A classic live-at-home Gen Zer with no interest in adulthood, Nico resents any interruption of his “hovercraft repose.”
As the months go by, Martine endears herself to both Nico’s sisters, while finding her way into Gloria’s heart and even, briefly, Nico’s. But as Martine’s disturbingly dodgy compatriots begin to show up, Nico conceives a dark twin hostile to both his mother’s altruism and the “migrant crisis” in general—and turns out to be anything but a reliable narrator himself.
Based loosely on a program a New York City mayor floated but did not initiate, A Better Life is Lionel Shriver at her best: smart, funny, and sensitive to the moral nuances of perhaps the most divisive issue of our times.
Lionel Shriver was born on May 18, 1957 in Gastonia, North Carolina, United States. She 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 lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.