“Big Brother is vintage Shriver - observant, unsettling, funny, but also, as Pandora admits, ‘Very, very sad.’” - Miami Herald
“As a writer, Shriver’s talents are many: She’s especially skilled at playing with readers’s reflexes for sympathy and revulsion, never letting us get too comfortable with whatever firm understanding we think we have of a character.” - Washington Post
“The diet - the story of a heroically undertaken significant change - is pretty nearly irresistible. But what really powers this story, an outsize look at the most basic of human activities, eating, is a search for the definition, and appreciation, of ‘ordinary life.’” - Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Shriver is brilliant on the novel shock that is hunger. . . . Most of all, though, there’s her glorious, fearless, almost fanatically hard-working prose.” - Guardian
“Shriver is wonderful at the things she is always wonderful at. Pace and plot. . . . Psychology.” - Independent
“Her [Shriver’s] best work--Big Brother is her twelfth novel--presents characters so fully formed that they inhabit her ideas rather than trumpet them.” - New Republic
“(A) delicious, highly readable novel . . . (which) raises challenging questions about how much a loving person can give to another without sacrificing his or her own well-being.” - People, People Pick (4 Stars)
“A searing, addictive novel about the power and limitations of food, family, success, and desire. Shriver examines America’s weight obsession with both razor-sharp insight and compassion.” - J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Maine and Commencement
“The ever-caustic Shriver has great fun at the expense of crash diets and a host of other sacred pop-culture, er, cows. Politically correct it’s not, but Big Brother finds the funny - and the pathos - in fat.” - USA Today
“Would I recommend Big Brother? Absolutely. It confronts the touchy subject of American lard exuberantly and intelligently; it makes you think about what you put in your mouth and why.” - Bloomberg
“Pandora is a masterly creation.” - New York Times Book Review
“The latest compelling, humane and bleakly comic novel from the author of We Need to Talk about Kevin.” - Evening Standard (London)
“A gutsy, heartfelt novel” - Sunday Times (London)
“A surprising sledgehammer of a novel” - The Times (London)
“[Shriver] has a knack for conveying subtle shifts in family dynamics. . . . Ms Shriver offers some sage observations. . . . Yet her main gift as a novelist is a talent for coolly nailing down uncomfortable realities.” - The Economist
“Lionel Shriver’s Big Brother has the muscle to overpower its readers. It is a conversation piece of impressive heft.” - New York Times
“A great plot setup that presents an array of targets for Shriver to obliterate with her knife-sharp prose.” - The Rumpus
“The moving (and shocking) finale will have you thinking about the ‘byzantine emotional mathematics’ we all put ourselves through when overwhelmed with family responsibilities.” - Oprah.com
“The fellowship of Lionel Shriver fanatics is about to grow larger, so to speak. Big Brother, a tragicomic meditation on family and food, may be her best book yet.” - Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
“An intelligent meditation on food, guilt, and the real (and imagined) debts we owe the ones we love.” - Publishers Weekly
“Shriver brilliantly explores the strength of sibling bonds versus the often more fragile ties of marriage.” - Booklist
“What would you do for love of a brother? For love of a husband? For love of food? In Big Brother, Shriver’s new and wonderfully timely novel, her heroine wrestles with these vexing questions. Only the scales don’t lie.” - Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
“Brilliantly imagined, beautifully written, and superbly entertaining, Shriver’s novel confronts readers with the decisive question: can we save our loved ones from themselves? A must-read for Shriver fans, this novel will win over new readers as well.” - Library Journal