Better Life

'A superb satirical novelist' WASHINGTON POSTIn a provocative novel addressing contemporary immigration by the sharply observant Lionel Shriver, a New York family takes in a Honduran migrant who may or may not be the innocent paragon she claims to be. An incendiary provocateur EVENING STANDARD A gleeful satire on the immigration debate THE TIMESGloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her 26-year-old son Nico in a sprawling house in Brooklyn, decides to participate in a new city programme Big Apple, Big Heart that would pay her to take in a migrant as a boarder. Gloria is thrilled when sweet, kind, helpful Martine arrives. But Nico is sceptical. A classic live-at-home, unemployed Gen Zer with no interest in adulthood, Nico resents the indignity of moving from his self-contained basement flat and back into his childhood bedroom.As the months go by, Martine endears herself to both Nico s sisters, while finding her way into Gloria s heart. But as Martine s disturbingly dodgy compatriots begin to show up, Nico grows only more hostile to both his mother s altruism and the migrant crisis in general though turns out to be anything but a reliable narrator himself.