By Lionel Shriver
“A liberal is a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet” — Frank Rizzo, former mayor and police commissioner of Philadelphia
Rizzo’s observation is the main theme of Shriver’s timely, controversial A Better Life. Despite its provocative subject matter — crime and illegal immigration — I found the novel surprisingly entertaining. Told from the perspective of shiftless, contented (too contented) 26-year-old Nico, we observe (Nico’s favorite pastime) as an ever-growing band of illegal Hondurans invade the house he shares with his too-trusting, “progressive” mother.
To say the plot is political would be an understatement.
If there is a flaw to Shriver’s novel, I’d say that the climactic confrontation, in which calamitous events escalate for mother and son, is a bit at odds with the book’s overall tone of detached bemusement. The story is fun to experience — until it suddenly isn’t.
This is what I wrote in my 2021 review of the similarly controversial American Dirt:
“As for the novel’s politics, yes, it is very one-sided, very pro-immigrant and pro-immigration. But immigration is a huge story, with many subplots. Someone else could write an equally moving, largely anti-immigration story, I’m sure. A story about an illegal immigrant, a career criminal who wreaks havoc on a small American border town, for example. American Dirt simply isn’t that story.”
A Better Life is that story.
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