Review by Booklist Review
When Pearson Converse's exceptionally bright son is suspended from school for calling a classmate's t-shirt "stupid," it is the last straw in the university professor's increasingly fraught war against the latest cancel-culture craze to consume the nation. "Mental Parity" posits that everyone is intelligent in their own way, and everyone is equally good at everything. Words such as slow and dumb are the newest incendiary terms to be stricken from the lexicon. Forget labels such as racist or ageist; to speak this way is to be labeled smartist. So when Pearson rants to her oldest friend, NPR commentator Emory Ruth, about her beliefs, she thinks she's preaching to the choir. But Emory has her own career to protect, and a lifelong friendship may not survive the litmus tests of personal behavioral policing sweeping the country. During her prolific and acclaimed career, Shriver has had her own dustups with language and literature censorship, and her unrestrained indictment of the illogical excesses of pandering to such societal whims is on full and heady display. Readers craving sharp social commentary need look no further than Shriver, who is at the top of her game with this scary-smart and scathing satire.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Shriver (The Mandibles) suffuses this cogent tale of a toxic friendship with contrarian political commentary. The story begins in an alternative version of 2011, as the misguided Mental Parity movement takes over the U.S. Its adherents seek to eliminate distinctions between the "cerebral elite--academics, doctors and lawyers, scientists" and the hoi polloi. Words like stupid are verboten; variations in people's intelligence are explained by "processing issues." Shriver's protagonist, Pearson Converse, is highly skeptical of the Mental Parity line. Not only does she teach in Voltaire University's English department, she also chose the sperm donor for her two elder children based on his high IQ (she's "bored" by her youngest, age six, who was conceived naturally). Meanwhile, her best friend, the sleek, confident Emory Ruth, appears to be riding the "craze of intellectual egalitarianism" to advance her television career, even as the constitutionally defiant Pearson finds herself in increasingly precarious positions as the movement grows more sinister in reach. Shriver devotes a bit more time than necessary to explaining the nuances of the Mental Parity movement; the novel's best parts concern the prickly, sinuous relationship between Pearson and Emory. Those sympathetic toward Shriver's anti-groupthink message will find much to enjoy. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
America is overtaken by an idiocracy in Shriver's latest satire/anti-PC screed. In this tale of alternative recent history, circa 2010 the word stupid has become verboten, thanks to the rise of a "Mental Parity" movement that insists nobody is smarter than anyone else. Narrating this lamentable turn of events is Pearson Converse, a college English teacher, mother of three, and fierce critic of the campaign against "smartism" and the "brain-vain" that strictly prohibits all variations of the S-word. (She's nearly fired when she cheekily assigns her class Dostoevsky's The Idiot.) In the years that follow, Shriver chronicles the intensifying catastrophe of this anti-intellectual effort: The crossword is canceled, the Mars rover crashes, Osama bin Laden gets away, gay marriage remains illegal, China tramples the U.S. on the world stage. On the home front, Pearson's two very gifted children grow slack in the absence of academic rigor, while her third, less-bright child turns informant on her mom. Pearson's partner, a tree surgeon, suffers for lack of competent assistance; her journalist best friend, once as exasperated with "cognitive justice" as Pearson, turns into its vocal supporter, a move Shriver depicts as vile Vichy collaborationism. Practically every Shriver book in the past decade has been a critique of liberal hobbyhorses; imagining a made-in-the-U.S.A. Cultural Revolution, for her, is business as usual. But without a clear sense of what kind of tyranny of the (lib) commons Shriver fears--DEI? the language police? socialism? virtue signaling? grade inflation?--the conceit is a better fit for a tart short story than an extended narrative. And given that today's most robust anti-intellectual initiatives come from right-wing quarters--book bans, shutdowns of college liberal arts departments, efforts to drain public school funds--Shriver's process for picking a target seems, let's say, cognitively subpar. A peculiar novel driven more by bogeymen than brains. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
