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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
Copyright © Lionel Shriver 2018
Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Jacket illustration © Shutterstock.com
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
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: 9780008265229
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008265243
Version: 2018-03-15
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, it makes me feel heavy. [ … ]
In the second place, it makes me feel it ought to be larger.
—E. M. FORSTER, “My Wood”
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
The Standing Chandelier: A Novella
The Self-Seeding Sycamore
Domestic Terrorism
The Royal Male
Exchange Rates
Kilifi Creek
Repossession
The ChapStick
Negative Equity
Vermin
Paradise to Perdition
The Subletter: A Novella
About the Author
Also by Lionel Shriver
In bottomless gratitude, to Jeff and Sue. This is not about you.
JILLIAN FRISK FOUND the experience of being disliked bewildering. Or not bewildering enough, come to think of it, since the temptation was always to see her detractor’s point of view. Newly aware of a woman’s aversion—it was always another woman, and perhaps that meant something, something in itself not very nice—she would feel awkward, at a loss, mystified, even a little frightened. Paralyzed. In a traducer’s presence, she’d yearn to refute whatever about herself was purportedly so detestable. Yet no matter what she said, or what she did, she would involuntarily verify the very qualities that the faultfinder couldn’t bear. Vanity? Flakiness? Staginess?
For an intrinsic facet of being disliked was racking your brain for whatever it was that rubbed other people so radically the wrong way. They rarely told you to your face, so you were left with a burgeoning list of obnoxious characteristics that you compiled for them. So Jillian would demote her garb from festive to garish or even vulgar, and suddenly see how her offbeat