Shriver, Lionel

Lionel Shriver is the author of nine novels—The Female of the Species (1986), Checker and the Derailleurs (1987), The Bleeding Heart (1990), Ordinary Decent Criminals (1992), Game Control (1994), A[Page 1118]Perfectly Good Family (1996), Double Fault (1997), We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003), and The Post-Birthday World (2007). She has received a number of prizes for her fiction, including the prestigious Orange Prize for female fiction writers in 2005 for We Need to Talk About Kevin, a controversial narrative about a mother who raises a mass murderer.

Lionel was born Margaret Ann Shriver in May, 1957 in Gastonia, North Carolina, where her father was Presbyterian minister. When she was 15, she changed her name to Lionel, believing that the male-sounding name better suited her sense ...