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The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Lionel Shriver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
The Standing Chandelier was first published in 2017
The Self-Seeding Sycamore was originally written for short story collection Reader, I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier and published by The Borough Press
The Royal Male was first published in the Telegraph
Exchange Rates and Negative Equity were first published in The Times
Kilifi Creek was first published in the New Yorker
Repossession was first published in the Guardian
Vermin was first published in Stylist
Paradise to Perdition was first published in Raffles Hotels & Resorts Magazine
Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Jacket illustration © Shutterstock.com
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This collection of short stories is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008265250
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008265243
Version: 2018-07-12
‘Phenomenal … Shriver has the gift for making one instantly curious, entertained, involved and ready to move in – no matter what the property’
Observer
‘Shriver’s intellect and talent, her political convictions and her impressive confidence are all on display … assertive, frequently funny and altogether satisfying … her confident grasp of the material and her natural gifts as a storyteller will keep you in her spell and leave you, at the end, slightly altered … persuasive and richly entertaining’
New York Times
‘Genius’
Stylist
‘Whip-smart … Crisp, conversational and convincingly true to life, Shriver’s stories are a treat’
Daily Mail
‘Shriver remains a formidably sharp writer, one of the best we have’
Evening Standard
‘All Shriver’s stories are satisfying. I exhaled a little triumphant “Ha!” at the end of each one … Shriver is brilliant’
The Times
‘Shriver is the master of the neat twist’
Daily Express
‘Shriver is at her best here, an acerbic comedian, Dickensian in style, whose vibrant characters are best seen in dramatic action and dialogue’
Financial Times
‘At her best, she takes the familiar and mundane and turns it into something surprising and strange’
Sunday Express S Magazine
‘A pugnacious, brilliantly articulate, hilarious collection’
iNews
‘Wry and nimble … richly detailed … Shriver’s stories will make readers laugh when they feel they shouldn’t, and the uniting theme of houses and humans works exceedingly well, turning up new wrinkles with each successive story’
Publishers Weekly
TO
BERGER:
one of the three people who make
my life worth living.
I bought a wood [ … ]. It is not a large wood—it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected, blast it, by a public footpath. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will vary in horror, this very important question: What is the effect of property upon the character? [ … ]
If you own things, what’s their effect on you? What’s the effect on me of my wood?
In the first place,
