Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

For Pandora, cooking is a form of love.  Alas, her husband, Fletcher, a self-employed cabinetmaker who crafts high-end, one-of-a-kind furniture, now spurns the "toxic" dishes that he'd savored through their courtship, and loses hours a day to manic cycling.  But the couple's comfortable, if sometimes strained, routine is about to implode.  When Pandora picks up her older brother Edison at her local Iowa airport, she literally doesn't recognize him.  In the four years since the grown siblings last saw one another, the once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds.  What happened?

And it's not just the weight; Edison interjects himself into Pandora's world: breaking Fletcher's handiwork, making massive breakfasts for the family, enticing her stepson not only to forgo college but to drop out of high school.  After the brother-in-law has more than overstayed his welcome, Fletcher delivers his wife an ultimatum: it's him or me.  Putting her marriage and her adopted family on the line, Pandora chooses her brother - who, without her support in losing weight, will surely eat himself into an early grave.

Fans of Lionel Shriver will not be disappointed with this new novel, which I am absolutely placing at the top of my 2013 list (at least for now, who knows what gems are still to come?) As always, Shriver has crafted a detailed and complex narrative about family dynamics, love, loyalty, and the question of how to gauge what one person might 'owe' another, especially a blood relation. This is a story about fat as a social issue, a personal battle, and a family tragedy.

A quick plot summary would do this book and its readers an injustice - suffice it to say that 'Big Brother' has something for every kind of reader: sibling rivalry, fame, television, parental dysfunction, spousal competition, and food, glorious food. Shriver's characters are not always likable, or lovable, but they are strikingly real and sometimes painfully human. She writes witty dialogue and vocabulary-heavy descriptions that immerse the reader in the lives and minds of the characters; even the lesser characters are given brief moments to shine.

To anyone who has ever felt out of control in the face of someone else's struggle, or struggled themselves to reach out to someone else while maintaining a fragile hold on his or her own life, this book is a must-read. I highly recommend 'Big Brother', it's deserving of more than five stars!