So Much for That by Lionel Shriver

Reading Lionel Shriver is never a pleasurable experience. In spite of her intelligence and wit, she inspires grimaces rather than gratification. In her breakthrough novel: We Need to Talk about Kevin, she examined the making of a teenage serial killer, as well as turning a generation off becoming parents. In her latest So Much for That she dissects the US health system while raising the issue of how much a life is worth.

Glynis Knacker is a brilliant metalworker, an artist, who is yet to achieve her potential. Her husband Shep is a handyman who set up and sold a successful small business to fund his fantasy of retiring early in a third world paradise. Neither will realise their dreams when Glynis contracts a rare cancer. Her prognosis is dire, her treatment costs are prohibitive, and life is reduced to a survival contest.

A side story involves their best friends Jackson and Carol, with a severely disabled teenage daughter, Flicka. They too are struggling with the spiralling costs of health care, and the necessity to live “unfulfilled” lives.

All this is set up within the first thirty pages, so you can tell it is not going to be a fun ride.

Much of Shriver’s deadly diatribe is directed at the American people. For example, Shep sells his business to an employee who cashes in on the Internet potential by creating the domain “handiman.com”… “(handyman.com had already been taken, but they got all the clients who couldn’t spell; this being America, that hadn’t curtailed business in the slightest)” = ow!

For Christians, this book is a particularly difficult read. Shriver has two prominent characters who are Christians: Glynis’ born-again sister Deb, and Shep’s father Gabe, a Presbyterian minister. Neither is portrayed in a positive light.

Deb is blatantly described as seeking to spiritually benefit from her sister’s sickness, by pressuring her to make a death-bed conversion. Glynis’ response is venomous: “Do you vultures fly around the country swooping down on people too weak to put up a fight? You’re like ambulance chasers.” Deb’s response is not very helpful: “Who knows, maybe this sickness is God’s way of getting you to see His light.”

It is like Shriver can see inside our sin-filled hearts, and articulates our darkest thoughts and fears. She says things people might think, but would never admit to.

Shep’s Dad is a more complex character. He is a minister with a small congregation who appears to believe as much in money as in God. In the end he loses his faith after suffering a fall and being marooned in an aged care home.

There are many replacement gods here. For Glynis, it is her doctor, who promises her hope of salvation from her disease: she “believes” in her doctor, and has “faith” in him. “By contrast, Shep felt traitorous, cynical, and shallow for having been a doubter, a religious skeptic.”

Jackson on the other hand is trying for a different form of medical intervention to revitalise his physical relationship with his wife, with devastating consequences. The god of sexual prowess is not as fulfilling as he hopes.

All in all it isn’t a very attractive picture of modern life. Shep sums it up: “We slave away [at work] during the few years that we are capable of enjoyment. Then what’s left are the year’s we’re old and sick. We get sick on our own time. We only get leisure when it weighs on us. When it’s useless to us. When it’s no longer an opportunity but a burden.”

His god is leisure, while he’s healthy enough to enjoy it.

There is growth and development amongst the bleakness. Shep discovers the joys of serving and caring for those around him, even the simple pleasure of being a companion to someone who is exhausted: “This was a form of companionship he had been cherishing with Glynis of late: devoid of conversation, but so surprising in its contrast to being by yourself.”

In the end, the god is to die well, to pass away into nothingness. Shriver makes the comment that none of us are comfortable with death, or being around dying friends or relatives. We have not been taught how to behave in that circumstance.

It is painful to read the descriptions of the empty promises that people make to Glynis and Shep: to cook meals and clean and visit and give lifts… It is a reminder of how important it is to keep our word, and to be present with people through their trials.

It is at this point that there is a positive comment made about Christians. Shep turns to his father for wisdom at such a time as this, how do you care for someone who is dying? “Christians accept a duty of care for the sick. Most of my parishioners took that commitment seriously. Your secular friends only have their own consciences to prod them, and that’ not always enough. There’s no substitute for deeply held beliefs, son. They call you to your finest self.”

Perhaps that is where Shriver’s understanding of Christianity fails. It is not our beliefs that call us to our finest self… Not even a desire to please our God. It is the powerful transformation of a generous God, filling us with a desire to love others as he loves them, empowering us by his Spirit of grace.

It is the focus on self that is most disturbing in this novel. Shep’s solution to his crumbling world is ultimately harmful to others, but is justified because it seems to be a solution to those dearest to him. He just escapes from his shrinking world.

The ending is disappointing, perhaps summed up in the burying of Shep’s Dad: “Once the last shovelful was hefted, he said a few words, glad to be spared reading scripture. Gabe Knacker had never regained his faith in God, but he had regained his faith in his son, which was probably more important.”

Shriver’s focus is on living this life, and fulfilling your own potential. Although relationships are important, they can be let go if they sidetrack you or drag you down. Religion is seen as brainwashing at worst, a distraction at best, from the focus on self in the present.

It left me with an empty feeling.