It would be nice if life-changing moments were marked by a cosmic announcer, someone who would tell you, “Here, pay attention right now because this particular choice will make all the difference.” But it doesn’t work that way, and it’s not until well after the moment has passed that its implications become clear.
You don’t get a do-over, and you don’t ever get to see how another choice might have played out. Which is why Lionel Shriver’s “The Post-Birthday World” is so enticing. She takes a single pivotal moment and follows it down two diverging paths. The resulting novel is a meditation on two discretely different might-have- beens.
Irina McGovern is an illustrator of children’s books. She has followed her partner, Lawrence Trainer, to London, where he’s a think-tank wonk. They’ve been in the relationship for nine years and it seems solid, though not one headed for the altar.
For the last four years, they’ve dined with Ramsay Acton on his birthday. Ramsay is a well-known snooker player they met when Irina was collaborating with his wife. That marriage is over, but the birthday celebration remains. Except this year, Lawrence is out of the country. He pushes Irina not to give up their tradition, to go to dinner with Ramsay on her own.
As the evening unfolds, she realizes she is strongly attracted to the man across the table. By night’s end, she is overcome by a desire to kiss him; we are not talking a peck on the cheek.
From that point, “The Post- Birthday World,” uses paired chapters, to take the reader down parallel paths. In one, Irina succumbs to her desire and, in the other, she does not.
Shriver describes this work as similar to her last, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” in that both are “audience participation books.” Speaking by phone from her home in London, Shriver said that in both books, “I try to keep (things) carefully balanced and inconclusive. Though you have lots of information at your disposal, the author is not going to tell you the answer.”
She found inspiration for the current novel, at least in part, close to home. “I was in the position, not all that long ago, of having to make a decision between two entirely worthy candidates for my affection,” she said. “I know what it’s like to have to make a decision between two appealing, if flawed like everyone, men who presented me with respectively different lives. Of course, you never get to explore what would have happened if you’d taken the other route.”
Shriver is writing about everyday relationships and their challenges. Succumbing to Ramsay’s attraction will take Irina down a path that, initially at least, isn’t surprising. But remaining committed to Lawrence also has some risks. Shriver said, “You want to believe, you make that leap of faith (with a partner), and believe that you have found it, and that – unlike all the other people who are dropping like flies around you – you as a couple will prevail and you feel safe and comfortable in the best sense. And then something happens when you’re not looking. It shakes your world.”
Part of the attraction of the novel is that Shriver steadfastly refuses to give the reader a correct answer. “I went to a lot of effort to try to balance both sides of the book. If it’s working, in my view, just as your sympathies start bending what seems like permanently towards one of her partners, Lawrence or Ramsey does something intolerable, then I’m going to throw something at you in the next chapter that will wrench your sympathy back again in the opposite direction,” she said.
Shriver’s fiction is an appropriate reflection of reality. “You can probably be with any number of people,” she said. “They would each have their strengths and their weaknesses. It’s really just a matter of taste. One of the things you are picking is your problems. You don’t get to pick one that doesn’t have any problems. It’s not available.” And, along the way, Irina’s character is formed, in part, by her choice. “When you choose your partner, you also choose a version of yourself, and each of these men brings out different things in her.”
The most challenging writing in the book, Shriver said, were the sections in which Irina stayed with Lawrence. “I knew that I wanted to represent a relationship that, unless it is written with great care and detail and tenderness, would simply seem boring. I was trying to describe a relationship that is quiet and companionable, but I don’t think it’s necessarily boring. I think it’s the type of relationship the majority of people have. The huge sexual fire is tamped down. Most of all, you are best friends,” she said.
One aspect of the novel is the impact that marriage, or the lack of formal vows, has on a relationship. Shriver believes that the fact that Irina and Lawrence were not married was an indicator that they weren’t paying enough attention to the relationship. And the fact that they weren’t probably made it easier for Irina to leave. But though a wedding band would have been sign of an explicit promise, Irina breaks an implicit promise when she leaves Lawrence for Ramsay.
The novel’s ending, while not happy, is hopeful and, more importantly, right. Things are not tied up in a neat package and Irina’s future is left for the reader to decide. But Shriver leaves the reader with a thoughtful moral, “that things will be OK, or not OK, in equal measure, whichever person you choose. I find (that idea) rather relaxing.”
Shriver will appear at 7:30 p.m. March 22 at the Tattered Cover Book Store, 2526 E. Colfax Ave.
Robin Vidimos reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
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The Post-Birthday World
By Lionel Shriver
HarperCollins, 517 pages, $25.95
