But what if you kissed him? Or didn't?

 Lionel Shriver is one of those authors I know by name like Colson Whitehead, Paul Beatty, Jesmyn Ward but have never read. Therefore. when a paperback edition of her 2007 novel The Post-Birthday World leaped off the shelf and into my hands at a recent library book sale, I added it to my sack of treasures with silent apologies to Ms. Shriver for not contributing to her royalties.

What a great book! 

I may have ignored it when it came out because it’s fat and I’ve been avoiding fat books. It may be fat, but it’s not flabby and it held me through all 517 pages.

A May 2020 Guardian article says that Lionel Shriver “is a US-born writer whose novels include Big Brother, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 and the bestselling We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange prize and was turned into a film by Lynne Ramsay starring Tilda Swinton. In 2014, she won the BBC national short story award.” Her novel, The Motion of the Body Through Space, is about a long-married couple whose relationship is almost destroyed when one of them becomes obsessed with exercise. Her most recent novel Should We Stay or Should We Go centers around an elderly couple bound in a suicide pact. In other words, her novels are liable to make readers uncomfortable as the books make them think.

Shriver herself says, “I wanted out of North Carolina, where I was born. I wanted out of my given name (‘Margaret Ann’—the whole double-barrel; can you blame me?), and at fifteen chose another one. I wanted out of New York, where I went to university at Columbia. I wanted out of the United States.” She now lives in London.

The Post-Birthday World centers around Irina McGovern, a children’s-book illustrator in her early thirties who has lived for ten years with Lawrence Trainer, a researcher/analyst who works for a London think tank and Ramsey Acton, a top-seeded snooker player. Ramsey is tall, exceptionally handsome, and wealthy from tournament winnings, product endorsements, and more. Irina and Lawrence are both ex-pat Americans, and Lawrence is fascinated by snooker and, by extension, Ramsey. They begin to meet socially every few months, and annually on Ramsey’s birthday.

On Ramsey forty-second birthday, Lawrence happens to attending a Sarajevo peace conference. Ramsey is recently divorced (his ex-wife Iris writes uplifting children’s books Irina illustrated). Lawrence encourages Irina to maintain a five-year tradition and have dinner with lonely Ramsey. She does. They return to Ramsey’s huge Victorian house for a post-dinner drink. Ramsey plays solitary snooker while Irina watches. When Ramsey finally joins her on his expensive leather-covered sofa, he reaches for her and—

And the story splits in two. In one version Irina returns to her flat, shaken but unkissed. In the second version she kisses Ramsey and is lost. The kiss is electric and when, a chapter or so later, they finally make love the sex is even more incandescent.

After page 41 the chapters alternate. Irina the faithful helpmeet to stable, reliable Lawrence, now regretting her timidity. And Irina the sex bestotted, obsessive lover. Ramsey is a stud, and I suspect Stiver had fun writing the book. “Ramsey Acton” is not far removed from “Ram Action.”

The Post-Birthday World is rich in scenes and activities that play off and resonate with one another as the two Irinas live with (or without) stolid Lawrence and intoxicating Ramsey. Striver also is able to do something I admire—articulate general observations—because her insights are thought-provoking and I can’t do it. Three examples:

—Because the unself-aware—which includes basically everyone—are impervious to uncharitable perceptions of their underlying motives, all these insights you have into people and what makes them tick are surprisingly useless.

—You didn’t have to love each other [your mother, your father, your siblings]; indeed, you could revile each other. But the one thing apparently not in your power was to demote a member of your family to the unimportant.

—For the spectator, there are two kinds of sportsmen: those you trust and those you don’t. It is likely the divide correlates with whether the sportsman trusts himself, but in any event watching a player in whom you have imperfect faith fosters anxiety. Watching the kind who has it, whatever it is, and knows he has it, is relaxing.

Striver drops these like raisins in a Christmas cake and The Post-Birthday World is the richer for them. All I can do is join the three pages of review quotes in the front of the paperback and encourage you to find a copy yourself.