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Title: The Mandibles

Subtitle: A Family, 2029-2047

Author: Lionel Shriver

Narrator: George Newbern

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-21-16

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

From Lionel Shriver, the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international best seller We Need to Talk About Kevin, comes a striking new novel about family, money, and global economic crisis.

The year is 2029, and nothing is as it should be. The very essence of American life, the dollar, is under attack. In a coordinated move by the rest of the world's governments, the dollar loses all its value. The American president declares that the States will default on all its loans; prices skyrocket, currency becomes essentially worthless, and we watch one family struggle to survive through it all.

The Mandibles can count on their inheritance no longer, and each member must come to terms with this in their own way - from the elegant expat author Nollie, in her middle age, returning to the US from Paris after many years abroad; to her precocious teenage nephew, Willing, who is the only one to actually understand the crisis; to the brilliant Georgetown economics professor Lowell, who watches his whole vision of the world disintegrate before his eyes.

As ever, in her new novel Shriver draws larger than life characters who illuminate this complicated, ever-changing world. One of our sharpest observers of human nature, Shriver challenges us to think long and hard about the society we live in and what, ultimately, we hold most dear.

Members Reviews:

The Buck Stops

Lionel Shriver's new novel, "The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047" is captivating, and at the same time a humorous and chilling work of speculative fiction. Early on, one of Shiver's characters, in referencing the works: "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "1984", says: "Plots set in the future are about what we fear in the present. They're not about the future at all." Since this particular character turns out to be extremely wrong about a lot of things, I take this as a wink to the reader that Shriver believes that many of her dire predictions about the economic future of the US may indeed become true. We'll see!

"The Mandibles" begins in 2029 (100 years since the "crash" of 1929). In what is later called "The Great Renunciation", the president (who is a "Lat": of Latin descent), calls for the renunciation all US debt and defaults on all foreign debt. Invoking the International Emergency Powers Act of 1977 (it's real), he calls for all gold to be confiscated. Blame is placed on nebulous "hostile foreign" entities who have tried to replace the dollar with the "bancor". The President, in addition to recalling all gold (including jewelry and dental work) from every citizen, has ordered the military to do a door-to-door search for hoarded gold and for those responsible to be fined and imprisoned. In addition, the US has "reset" all US Treasury bonds to zero and inflation has driven the price of a (scarce) head of cabbage up to $30. Some folks are happy that the "uber-rich" or the 1%-ers are falling like dominoes seeing it as finally a way to erase the vast economic disparities. The US starts printing (now almost worthless) money by the truckload, though with the toilet paper scarcity - well, you can imagine what happens.

The novel revolves around the eponymous Mandible family, founded by wealthy grandfather Douglas Mandible aka "Grand Man".