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    Game Control
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    Game Control
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    Game Control
    Audiobook10 hours

    Game Control

    Written by Lionel Shriver

    Narrated by Laurel Lefkow

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    From the Orange Prize-winning author of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN comes a grimly comic tale of bad ideas and good intentions. With a deft, droll touch, Shriver highlights the hypocrisy of lofty intellectuals who would "save" humanity but who don't like people.

    Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition.

    Set against the vivid backdrop of modern-day Africa, Game Control is a wry, sardonic conspiracy story about bad ideas and good intentions.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 1, 2017
    ISBN9780008223250
    Unavailable
    Game Control
    Author

    Lionel Shriver

    Although Lionel Shriver 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 in no way wishes for the inclusion of this information to imply that she is more “intelligent” or “accomplished” than anyone else. The outdated meritocracy of intellectual achievement has made her a bestselling author multiple times and accorded her awards, including the Orange Prize, but she accepts that all of these accidental accolades are basically meaningless. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Game Control

    3.5/5

    37 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I am used to being challenged by Lionel Shriver's books: they are always full of intelligent insight and dense prose. But there is usually a compelling plot driving thing along, and in this particular novel I felt the balance between plot and analysis, however intelligent, had been tipped too far in the wrong direction. There can't be many novels written entirely about demography so top marks both for originality and research. It got me thinking about a school geography project I did 35 years ago - among the topics to choose from was population, and I immediately homed in on it, the idea of pages of numbers appealing to my aspergic tendencies. It wasn't long before I realised this topic was literally all about sex. What a shock that was to my queasy 12 year old self and I promptly abandoned it in favour of coastal erosion. But what's wrong with a book all about sex when you're an adult? Absolutely nothing, except that this one was full of people theorising out loud and avoiding having sex. The central character, beleaguered family planning worker Eleanor, is merely a conduit as she visits first one intellectual who regales her with his theories about population control, then she visits another who presents the opposite point of view. A meeting between the two opposing intellectuals ensues and they argue wordily with each other about population control. And repeat. Stick with it and a plot with major dramatic potential does emerge, but it does take persistence. Arriving there was like reaching the summit of Everest: you want to stand and look around for a while and reflect on just how few people have stood where you are. It is clear from the author's afterword that this wasn't a massive commercial success, and that indeed its published form is some one hundred manuscript pages short of its original length ("so readers count your blessings" she comments sardonically). A book to read for the sake of completeness and for the thought provoking points it puts forward. I can't deny that I'm far better informed about demography than I was when I picked it up.
    • 3/5
      another well written novel by Lionel Shriver who also wrote "We Need to talk about Kevin". This novel did not grip me like the "Kevin" novel did. It is a good commentary on the hypocrisy of bad ideas, the idea being put forth by Calvin Piper to reduce overpopulation by eliminating masses of people with a deadly virus.
    • 5/5
      Again, Lionel Shriver shows her mastery of character study. You feel like you know these people. Unfortunately, I’ve dated guys like Calvin Piper. (Hopefully, they were only exploiting my low self-esteem to get me to do their homework and not plotting mass murder)