“If you’re writing something that doesn’t offend anyone then you’re probably writing bad work”, Lionel Shriver tells me. The New York Times bestselling author has made an art of saying what many others are too afraid to say, particularly in the years since her eighth novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, won the 2005 Orange Prize for fiction for its sympathising with the mother of a school mass murderer.
Shriver’s novels since then have tackled everything from terrorism to morbid obesity and elderly suicide pacts, earning her a host of high-profile non-fiction gigs for publications from The Spectator to UnHerd.
