Big Brother: Brilliant family fiction from the award-winning author of We Need To Talk About Kevin

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Tanner will never get fat!" said Cody. "He's got to watch his figure so he can keep pawing all over his girlfriends." Since I'd involved my best friend Oliver Allbless in the joke from the beginning, it was his voice I'd recorded, and he'd proven adept at mincing his tones into the huffy and judgmental. For many a younger sibling with an older brother looking on, being solicited for an autograph, or whatever this woman wanted, would be a fantasy come true. But not today, and I came close to denying I was any such person just to get away. On the other hand, explaining to Edison why I'd lied would make a bigger mess, so I said yes. See, what Wynton's done by bringing in Jazz at Lincoln Center is cast the genre as elitist. As high culture, high art. Elitist, can you believe it? A form that came straight outta whites-only water fountains? But that's the drill now, man. Middle-aged boomers hit the Blue Note when they're too out of it to keep up with hip-hop and figure they need to ditch pop for something more sophisticated. It's a pose, man ..." Glop that much jam on your toast," Fletcher grunted en route to a glass of water, "might as well be eating cake."

Was a TV star," I said. "He spends most of his time opening used-car lots and doing Rotary Club lunches — " I didn't enjoy the thought: He sounds like Travis. It bothered me that my brother was still trotting out the same list of musicians that I'd learned years before to impress aficionados. It was a list, apparently, that Edison recited to himself. So usually I'd have been warm and chatty and grateful, but not today. I shook off the fan mumbling, "Well, I'm very happy for you, then," and pivoted to the crosswalk. But then, the joys of obscurity were my own discovery. Like everyone else in L.A., I was raised to regard being a nobody as a death. It may have been easier for me to reject that proposition because from the age of eight I grew up with celebrity at ready hand — or celebrity by association, the worst kind: unearned, cheap. I'm not dissing Wynton Marsalis," Edison was opining. "He's brought in some bread, if nothing else. But the trouble with Wynton is he feeds this whole nostalgia thing, like jazz is over, you hear what I'm sayin'? Like it's in a museum, under glass. Nothing wrong with keeping the standards alive, so long as you don't turn the whole field into one big snoring PBS doc. 'Cause it's still evolving, dig? I mean, you got a certain amount of lost free crap, which the public hates, and drives what few folks do listen to jazz even further into the ass of the past. Cats who blow all freaky don't appreciate that even Ornette riffed on an underlying structure. But other Post-Bop cats out there are killing. Even some of Miles's contemporaries are still playing, still innovating: Sonny, Wayne ..."

Novels by Lionel Shriver

Nah, that was just the airline being impatient. Don't walk fast as I used to." Edison — or the creature that had swallowed Edison — heaved toward the baggage belt. "But I thought you didn't see me." It's been over four years. I guess it took me a minute. Please, let me take that." He allowed me to shoulder his battered brown bag. Visiting my brother in New York, I'd trailed after his ground-eating galumph, nervous of getting left behind in a strange city as he threaded nimbly through slower pedestrians without colliding with lit cigarettes. Yet walking with him toward the airport exit, I was obliged to employ the step-close, step-close of a bride down the aisle. I'm going to share a flat with Edison for a year," I said, as if this was the most normal thing in the world rather than an unlikely plot twist. "We can diet together."

We're not rich," I said. Leaving aside my stepson's inflated assessment of our family's circumstances, rich was a word for other people, and generally for those one doesn't like. "We're only doing okay. And be sure not to say anything like that around your uncle." I corrected with an eye roll, "Step-uncle." verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ You'd be surprised. You don't use his surname. I still get asked about the geeze more often than you'd think."It's impolite to talk about money. And your uncle Edison seems to have fallen on tough times. You don't want to rub it in." 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 I was grateful when you offered to switch," said the woman. "I was totally smashed against the window. But letting him have the aisle didn't help you much." Step-uncle," Tanner corrected, standing at the counter getting toast crumbs on the floor. "Right next door to total stranger in my book. Sorry. Got plans."