Ordinary Decent Criminals audiobook

Do you enjoy long winded, multi-layered, multi-POV novels about fractured people and countries and the dualities that we all carry within ourselves and how these "bits" can contribute to one's complexity and fascination but also can completely undermine any sort of lasting human relationship? WELL I DO. I don't know what kind of genre this is, but this novel is reminiscent of "A Perfect Spy", "The Untouchable", and a handful of other books that I am too excited to remember right now. ODC will be a novel that you will either love or hate. You will either be entirely captivated by Shriver's ability to capture a person in all his/her complexity and contradiction and write AT LENGTH AND IN GREAT DETAIL about such a person's normal existence. Or you will be completely bored and put off by this and say what is the actual point of this novel? I can honestly say, though, that this novel was revelatory. Shriver is an absolute master at creating characters that you love and hate in one breath. I identified with Estrin and Farrell and was exasperated by them and was touched and then angry and then crying. This novel is EXQUISITE and I haven't even gotten to the part where Shriver folds in Northern Ireland and its own fractured people/geography/politics. This novel has been recently republished and is hard to find, but if you find it, please read it. Or who knows, maybe you will be one of the people I gift it to...

Read again and againOne difficult book to read but as poetic as it is frustrating. Shriver has much to say, as she honestly admits, and what she had to say is delivered with machine gun accuracy. Suffering for suffering's sake is so Catholic. Righteousness and bigotry so Protestant. One gets a huge dose of both in this book. Not too mention more about the Irish Troubles than one ever cared to know, yet compelling enough to keep watch all the way to the conference and beyond. This is the one book I will probably read several times in order to absorb all what Shriver has revealed and shared. My own journey similar in some ways, word for word; yet, more complexity than even I have created in my own world.

Having listened to many interviews and commentaries with Lionel Shriver over the years and found her a distinctly non-conformist mind, I have been curious to read one of her books for a while.I have liked books based in the turmoil of being Irish in the 20th century for a long time too so I guess that's why I picked this one.This book is about that, but it's really a love story. Which is a struggle for me, but she renders it in a compelling fashion.Anyway, I learned more from her glossary at the end of the book about the conflict in Northern Ireland than I have from anyone's reporting on the matter (though God only knows how well I have read any of that).

Very interesting and confusing, as someone who doesn't know much about "the Troubles". I thought it was a very vivid depiction of the conflicting nature of a place in upheaval, how it can be simultaneously terrifying and exciting and ordinary. For people who like drama life in such a place as Northern Ireland can be utterly compelling.

Lionel Shriver's book about the Troubles is not without its long philosophical passages and needless love scenes, but it had a decent vibe and was not without some insight.

Beautifully written, engaging characters - Lionel Shriver never disappoints!