Lionel Shriver Warns Readers Not to Meet Their Favorite Authors
Credit.Rebecca Clarke
May 27, 2021
“The warts-and-all version is almost always a disappointment, and they risk a retroactive taint,” says the novelist, whose forthcoming book is “Should We Stay or Should We Go.”
What books are on your night stand?
Two books to prime for my next novel: Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” and Charles Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” One exercise in reverse research writing the novel first and then doing the homework: Katie Engelhart’s “The Inevitable,” about end-of-life suicide. Finally, mercifully, fiction: Ewan Morrison’s “How to Survive Everything,” which sounds like an antidote to the Engelhart.