MANIA by Lionel Shriver (Hemlock, $36.99) Mania
Mania opens with the novel’s narrator being summoned by the school of her 11-year-old son, Darwin, to collect him following a bullying incident. His crime? Ridiculing one of his classmates, employing “language we consider unacceptable in a supportive environment”.
For his mother, Pearson Converse (a thinly disguised Shriver), whose leafy Pennsylvania neighbourhood features signs proclaiming “We