A perfectly good family – Lionel Shriver

Set around the family who own a reconstruction mansion in North Carolina this novel certainly demonstrates Lionel Shriver’s skills and is worth reading. The mansion is called Heck-Andrews and becomes a point of contention between three siblings on the death of their parents. Corlis McCrea returns to the family home to find she is back in her childhood role of switching alliances between her two brothers. Younger Truman is the sensible, conservative married one. Her older brother Mordecai is spontaneous, wild and often drunk. Their inheritance, of characteristics as well as property, from their parents is explored and dissected in Shriver’s sharp and intelligent style