Lionel Shriver is a first-rate storyteller. And yet… A Better Life is a satire on the immigration problem that particularly faces the US. All the clichéd arguments on both sides of the debate are laid bare. In fact, the whole novel is a cliché. Yet clichés come into existence because their substance is what everyone is talking about. Shriver’s problem is that her plot and her characters can seem like ciphers for her polemical views; they dominate the novel’s form.
Gloria Bonaventura, a 62-year-old divorcée, lives with Nico, her 26-year-old, Fordham educated, unemployed layabout son, in a Queen Anne mansion in a fashionable part of New York. Her liberal, humanitarian conscience compels her to take part in a scheme to house immigrants, and she gives sanctuary to a worthy-seeming young Honduran woman, Martine Salgado. Nico is sceptical about Martine’s honesty, and gradually the old story of the guests taking over the host’s house begins to unfold. All the follies of NYC’s Big Heart welfare campaign of welcome and hospitality are made clear. Having won Gloria’s trust, Martine is able to introduce more Honduran immigrants to the house, one of whom may be her brother or perhaps her husband; others are bowie knife- wielding thugs and hangers-on, and they effect a complete takeover. The resolution is dramatic, exciting and in some respects spine-chilling.
Two statements encapsulate the essence of this novel. One concerns Nico: ‘He could not get his head around the fact that a crowd of criminal illegal aliens had confiscated a New York taxpayer’s legal property and the cops couldn’t do a damn thing.’ Opposed to that is Martine’s view: ‘USA no only for Americans. USA for every people.’ Shriver keeps the tension taut throughout. There is an aspect of redemption and more than a hint of tragedy.
The novel provokes and stimulates with all its twists. Trumpians will love it; others will loathe it. Yet what Shriver has to say, like it or not, must be said. She is acutely observant of the characters she creates, of their thoughts and manners. Her players eventually pass from caricatures into argumentative, believable characters.
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