Lionel Shriver, Back in Action

By Ron Hogan on August 28, 2006 12:34 PM

When Lionel Shriver’s Double Fault was first published in the late ’90s, it got good reviews and a 5,000-copy print run, but it had trouble finding its audience at bookstores and faded away without a paperback release. Flash forward nearly a decade later, when Shriver has become a hot commodity thanks to an Orange Prize for We Need to Talk About Kevin, and “there’s now a market for my books where there wasn’t before,” Shriver said as we met for lunch last week to discuss the republication of Double Fault by Serpent’s Tail. “It’s an opportunity for a second lease on life, but mostly it’s nice to have it available again.”

I wondered if Shriver had used the opportunity to “fix up” her novel, but she said no. “I can talk about my old books again, but I don’t want to write them again,” she said. “No writer worth her salt really likes dwelling in the past, but it’s been interesting to me to revisit the book as one of my readers. When I read it, I found myself interested in what happens next.”

“I’m glad that I wrote Double Fault when I did,” she continued, “because I couldn’t have written it now. I’m doing too well. In some ways, I had forgotten just how bleak that time in my life was, how depressing.” At her lowest point, Shriver was convinced that Kevin was going to be her last novel, preparing herself for a career in journalism. “I needed a viable career,” she recalled. “I didn’t want to be a burden to my publishers.” But Kevin changed all that, and not only is Double Fault finally back in print, she’s got a new novel coming out next spring from HarperCollins.