id="ub210b9c5-ed97-56f5-af6a-8186f8efabb7">
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
First published by Farrar Straus and Giroux 1990
Copyright © Lionel Shriver 1990
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Lionel Shriver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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: 9780008134778
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008134785
Version: 2015-08-18
Praise for Ordinary Decent Criminals:
‘Lionel Shriver is an original, by turns exuberantly comic, whimsical and cruel … The men – performers, compulsive talkers whose insistent self-revelation masks their emptiness – are wonderfully captured. This is a love story, and a surprisingly moving one. But Shriver’s edgy, accurate wit, her ear for rhetorical inflation and self-deception, and her refusal to be conned by personal or political platitudes expand her novel: its real subject is the seductiveness and sadness of Belfast itself’ Independent on Sunday
‘Shriver has obviously immersed herself deeply in Belfast life at the cellar-bar level … That Shriver is an uncommonly gifted writer is obvious even in the early pages. This is an unusual and impressive achievement’ Spectator
‘Shriver doesn’t rely on the glamour of violence or political intrigue for dramatic effect: she consciously shuns the hackneyed Romeo-and-Juliet yarn and the IRA-bomber-with-a-heart-of-gold cliché … The background details and dialogue ring very true to life; and the story is anchored in a recognisable Belfast. Shriver was able to infiltrate the local ethos and quickly assimilate its culture … Humour is a vital element in the novel. Shriver has a mischievous, hard-edged wit which borders on the cynical … The author’s indifferent comic perspective is best revealed in the novel’s “Glossary of Troublesome Terms.” Doubling as an often hilarious guide to Ulster politics and an astute mini-essay on the complicated nature of the situation, the glossary contains the kind of home truths which have eluded political analysts for decades’ Independent
‘If this is a love story, Lionel Shriver is no romantic, and the myths of the misty isle have failed to seduce her. She writes about self-destruction with all the muscular confidence of her leather-wearing heroine. Sentence after truthful sentence comes cruel, fresh and clever … As Ms Shriver observes, the last thing the civil war in Northern Ireland needs is another book. What a surprise then to find she has written a novel which is alight with perception, complexity, originality and, yes, laughter’ Daily Mail
‘Shrewdly caustic and unexpectedly moving … Ordinary Decent Criminals spares no one, offers no hope and – here’s the kicker – is bitingly funny … Wheelers and dealers, outspoken sentimentalists, dreamers and hoodlums all hope to profit from the violence; they would, in fact, be lost without it … Shriver is a gifted mimic. Born in North Carolina and educated in Columbia University, she’s gobbled Northern Ireland down and recreated it on the page with deceptive ease. At times, the book reads as if it were written exclusively for her Belfast co-residents. If Americans get it, that’s fine. If they don’t, it’s their loss … The bracing, acid wit and rich hyperbole are constant and a little terrifying. Who can be this cynical about horrors? Shriver can—and for a purpose. You may think she’s numbing you with her wisecracking nightmare when actually she’s leaving you all the more vulnerable to her final devastating plot twist. That’s the ultimate paradox in this feverish book. Ordinary Decent Criminals quivers with enticing energy, seduces you with its nervous amoral appeal’ Washington Post
‘One of the shrewdest, most disturbing pieces of fiction this place has thrown up in twenty years. Ordinary Decent Criminals reveals a considerable intellect at work in tandem with an acute ability to discern our deeper motivations. There is also a terrific sense of humour, sharp and sympathetic’ Belfast Ulster News Letter
‘[Shriver] says more about wee Ulster than dozens of other novelists before her put together. ‘Calcified with self-pity’ is one phrase that lingers’ Belfast Irish News
‘An uptight, acerbic thriller with no limits on intensity, and no concessions to sentimentality’ Belfast Fortnight
‘Here indeed is that rare bird – a novel set in Northern Ireland and written by an American which eschews the simplistic drawing of battlelines, which refuses to see the people of the North as merely Orange or Green, but as an assembly of ordinary decent sinners, and which portrays neither heroes nor martyrs … One of the most insistent themes in Ordinary Decent Criminals is that the people of the North are excited by their Troubles, and would die of boredom if they ended … Certainly Lionel Shriver is not bored by the Troubles, and no reader could be bored by this novel, enlivened by a sizzling ironic humour’ Dublin Sunday Tribune
‘Lionel Shriver being a young American who found her way to Belfast in 1987 to write a novel, chances were her book would be tinged either with Noraid naivety or the blood thirst of a war-zone junkie. But Ordinary Decent Criminals is neither; instead, it is an unflinching and bleakly comic novel that sees through the sloganeering of both sides while retaining a feel for the local colour, orange or green … This is a haunting tale, set against a background where to sit on the fence is to ride barbed wire’ Glasgow Herald
‘Shriver passes the accuracy test with very high marks.… The argot is accurate, and the fine detail of republican West Belfast and bourgeois South Belfast rings true. The author, moreover, has added richness by bravely including much local allusion which will only be appreciated locally … Shriver writes with great power’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Shriver knows her Belfast and her speckled politics, and yet, like her heroine, she has a salutary detachment. She too knows that there is a world elsewhere and has a deep-rooted suspicion that all the nonsense is not about republicanism or loyalism but about wish-fulfilment and the perpetuation of alternative systems of power … At one stage she makes Estrin say truthfully: ‘The last thing this place needs is another book.’ Yet if the place must be written about, I suppose