A super-rich Manhattan family shows its will to survive as the dollar collapses
There are plenty of zippy novels about the end of the world, but Lionel Shriver has had a different idea. The devastation in The Mandibles is monetary – its effect is to destroy the US economy so completely that the impoverished hordes are fleeing to Mexico. The formerly wealthy, who had installed themselves in France, must now go home because the almighty dollar is worth nothing, replaced as the international currency by the “bancor”. Your head may be spinning, because the details of finance are more abstruse than nuclear exchange, asteroid impacts or the second coming, but as she follows her characters through sufferings and accommodations, Shriver manages to make her case – that civilisation is a delicate network and what we have, even if that is only toilet paper and socks, is precious.
To begin with, the Mandibles are a prosperous Manhattanite bunch. “Great Grand Man” has an old-style fortune with its roots in manufacturing; his daughter, Enola, is a prominent author; and his son-in-law, Lowell, is an economist at Georgetown. Only his granddaughter Florence hasn’t really made it – she works at a homeless shelter and lives with Esteban, who works in an old folks’ home. The hard-to-handle cousin, Jarred, is a farmer upstate. The character who comes the closest to being Shriver’s protagonist is Florence’s son, Willing, 13 when the novel opens in 2029. He is simultaneously a snarky teenager and the most observant and perceptive commenter on the onslaught of misfortunes. He is well-intentioned, but will act outside the law if he has to.
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