Let's Talk About Immigration | A Better Life | Book Review

Let's talk about immigration. The fun topic. We can brush up on shit-hole countries, invasions, people in need, and whether we should be more empathetic on this topic. In other words, we can talk about the recent novel, A Better Life, by Lionel Shriver. I have already reviewed one book by this author, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and to this day I consider it among my favorite novels ever written. It has probably some of the best character work that I have ever read, and it compares to Better Call Saul, actually. Just know that she did it first. If you are familiar with Better Call Saul, then you know that Jimmy's development into Saul over time—his corruption—may or may not have been caused by his brother; it is all ambiguous, and this is on purpose. We Need to Talk About Kevin has the same complexity with the central question that it asks: did the mother drive her own son to commit a mass shooting? The reader is left to think over the questions, and put the evidence together.

As you can imagine with the topic of the previous book, and what I've hinted at in this one, Lionel Shriver is not one to shy away from controversy. She wrote the first one I read around the time the Columbine massacre happened, and this new one came out this year. What is it about, specifically? It takes place in 2022, during the height of the immigration chaos under the Biden administration. There is Gloria, a divorced mother of three, who is now living with her son, after he has utterly failed to launch. A fierce progressive, she decides to live up to the standards that have been set. A program in New York City is now allowing families to take migrants into their own family at tax payer expense. This was an actual program that was proposed at the time, though it didn't go through. Apparently, situations like this have happened in Portugal, though. This book tracks the predictable events through the eyes of Nico, the son who is immersed in right wing content online. He is suspicious of Martine, this migrant, and of immigration in general, and the reader is wondering the whole time whether his biases are getting to him, even as things start to turn south.

As with her previous book Shriver pulls absolutely no punches. This was a blunt and critical book that did far more than criticize the left or the right or even both sides. It looks at systemic issues, gender, how migrants see us, and more. It was a harsh critique of the Biden-era policies and the current state of discourse, and how everything is spiraling out of control. Looking around, I think it is an apt account for why we are where we are, even if this is fiction.

Characters

The characters are all well-wrought and annoyingly, frustratingly human. Shriver has a style, an approach to her characterization that is deep and well-realized—so much so that I could see it even in two books. They have their flaws, their flourishes, their hypocrisies. Oftentimes, you want to slap them, and it is never so simple. It is like reality, in other words.

Here, I want to touch upon the main ones. They are not the only important ones to talk about, however. That said, I will touch upon the others in the other sections.

Nico

Nico is the main character. He is completely immersed in an environment where everything is overwhelmingly left wing. His mother is radically left wing, and his sisters are as well. His father is the one exception, but he is largely out of the picture. At the same time, he secretly watches right wing podcasters and is obsessed with the immigration issue in particular. He is also a classic case of a failure to launch, someone who graduated college, realized that he hated his degree, and now he just lives off his inheritance that he got from his grandfather. And all of these factors are important, because a lot of the friction with his character comes from the fact that he is seeing his city degrade in the face of this massive influx of foreigners—many of whom simply live off the taxpayer dime, without contributing, themselves—and he is also not working. He isn't living off the taxpayer, so it's not exactly the same thing, but I swear you want to slap him at points in the story.

Gloria

Gloria is the mother of Nico, and the woman who chooses to take the migrant into her home in the first place. She is a radical leftist who is challenged by another woman: "If you like the migrants so much, why don't you take one into your home?" And so she does. Frankly, this made me laugh, because it's the perfect argument, and one I have used. People most in support of immigration are the ones who don't suffer its consequences. The states most likely to be open-asylum are in the north, rather than the south, and the immigrants are not coming across the Canadian border. Most people respond by distinguishing the borders of their own property with the border of their country, but there is no reason to do that. The fundamental point stands: most people are not willing to take them into their neighborhoods—or, god-forbid—their homes. They just want to post about it on social media to score clout, and then dump them into poor neighborhoods that suffer on their behalf. Gloria, however, is bold enough to actually bring in a migrant. The system is set up so that she will actually get paid for it.

Gloria is the prototypical leftist in every other respect. She supports all the causes, including trans rights and Palestine. As soon as it is in vogue, she is on it. Over the course of this novel, she actually does perform genuine acts of altruism. She does not actually fit the person that I criticized before. The irony is that this only poses a question: should altruism be anyone's goal? She is stripped to the bone, to the point that the reader wonders if a better word to describe it would be "exploitation." And this is why I've always been skeptical of altruism. A better approach is reciprocity. (And, to be fair, that was the original idea).

I think we see Gloria at her worst in this book. Opinions might differ, of course. But we see leftists, broadly speaking, at their worst and in all their glory repeatedly. They reduce complex topics with logistical issues to simple moral and character questions. They are heavy-handed. All of it. Yet there are two things to take in mind, here. She is real, she is someone that you know. And the second thing: the novel implies that there has been a change. The left has become a whole lot more humorless over the years, and Gloria reflects this change.

The Sisters

Palermo and Vanessa are also hyper-leftist, as you can imagine. But there are dimensions built into them, as well. Palermo is down-to-earth and accepting of harsh realities, which I found to be an interesting combination with her leftist politics. Yet you understand it, because of how it is packaged. She cares about those she sees as downtrodden. Vanessa is incessantly uplifting. She sees the best in everyone, no matter the situation, and definitely fits the positive stereotype of a leftist better than the rest.

Martine

Martine is the migrant that Gloria ends up taking into their home. She is the "Kevin" of the novel. That is not an indictment of her character but a comparison merely to impress a point about writing craft. As I emphasized at the beginning, Shriver likes to write uncertainty into her novels. In We Need to Talk About Kevin, it was Kevin who was under scrutiny, and by extension, his actions. Martine is under similar scrutiny, and we are treated with many potential explanations for her behavior, as we see her through Nico's skeptical eye.

She introduces herself to the family as the stereotypical, loud and stupid latino lady who is really friendly—but Nico senses that there is something else there. It seems to be an act. He grasps that there is more calculation to her than she lets on, and perhaps there even is. But there is always the question of how calculating and how manipulative. Regarding the actual events of the plot, there was always a question mark beside every event. It is understandable why a migrant would think they'd have to put a face on for a family. But how much calculation?

I've briefly wondered if this uncertainty to character would be a bit of a gimmick in Shriver's writing. I've only read two novels of hers, so I can't say if it's in every novel. Either way, I think the choice to use it in this novel is distinctly not a gimmick. The uncertainty about Martine is perfect for this kind of story, because if Shriver had chosen to come down on one side or another, it would have felt too heavy-handed in its messaging. It was the perfect writing decision.

Martine is not the only migrant relevant to this story, however. Her brother becomes involved fairly quickly. Other members of her family become involved in other ways that are suspicious. And then, as the story spirals from there, even people unrelated to her family are showing up. Their behavior is less ambiguous, and it shows just how deep in shit Gloria has gotten herself and her son into.

Themes

This book is basically a satire of far-leftist policies and sentiments on immigration, so you can imagine that the book heavily rides on the themes that it puts forward. And it goes beyond that. There are so many dimensions to this story, including the principle of free discussion, gender, and more.

Immigration

This book takes place at the height of the immigration crisis, during the Biden Administration. It  is reported that about ten million immigrants crossed America's borders in the course of those four years. There were so many that by the time the election came around, Donald Trump was handed the greatest political comeback in American history. He won the majority of male Hispanics, and the majority of Americans supported "mass deportations." Now, sentiments have changed again, but I'm just giving you the picture of what Biden hath wrought, and how people responded to it at the time; that is what this book is about. Trump has not been reelected yet in this timeline.

The story starts out rosy, with a seemingly perfect migrant, Martine, being taken in. To start, I just want to mention that this was partly the result of choice. Gloria and her daughters make sure to bring a woman into the house, rather than a man—and I will touch upon the gender element later in the story. But that little plan falls through rather quickly. Domingo, Martine's brother, shows up on Gloria's doorstep. He shows up out of nowhere, and he has no respect for their norms. He blasts loud ethnic Honduran music. He leaves garbage everywhere. Martine is reduced to his clean up crew, in essence. Of course, things get worse from there. They get a lot worse. But we stray into serious spoilers at that point.

Another thing that I could comment on is how Martine almost immediately becomes their personal cook. She was brought in to lodge there for her betterment, yet she starts to fit a stereotype, by her own choice—and Nico is suspicious of all of this. Coinciding with this is the introduction of Honduran food into the household, which Gloria hates, because it is fattening. But she is too polite to say otherwise. There is a certain humor to the events, before they really go south.

Probably the greatest touch, however, was the choice to show how cultural clash interacts with leftist ideology to show how much contempt some migrants have come to have from their host country. Not inherently so. It is more that they hate leftist policies; and the fact that they can exploit America tells them that the host country is no longer worthy of respect. What happens when a bunch of leftist white women and macho Honduran men enter a room?

Another point worth emphasizing is how the self-destructive policies of both the American system, and those in New York, feed into the problem. We always think about third world countries as being failed states—and in many respects, they are—but our own institutions have become so bloated over time, that there is scarcely much that can be done now. Cases take years at a time to be heard, and there seems to be no way out. Leftist ideology adds on to these problems, and these policies get buried in all of the bloat.

Stifled Discussion

It is both true in the real world and in this book that discussion about the topic of immigration is close to impossible. You can't express frustration about immigration, and there is even a euphemism treadmill in place to ensure that the right terminology is always being used. You can only talk about them in certain ways, to the point that conclusions are baked into the very conceptual tools. Undocumented immigrant, as opposed to illegal. It is a deliberate construction of language to push a particular perspective. Every time Nico tries to raise an argument about the events of the house with his mother or his oldest sister, he has to walk on egg shells, because they police how he even speaks about the issues. There is a stark difference between how he talks out loud and how he thinks to himself.

And it goes further than this.

Events get stranger, and questions begin to compound, but the mere act of asking them is penalized. Even as things get worse, certain points of discussion are off-limits. Discussion is stifled. And as this happens, people begin to live in different worlds. Nico begins to concoct different narratives about what could have happened, and what might happen. Beyond that, there are people who live on the fringes of the story who hold similar opinions to Nico, but they are in their own bubble. There is no way to cross the boundaries between the two, at least in a civil manner.

Gender

Gender cuts across all of the debates in this novel, and it does so in two ways. When looking at the immigrants, the men are the ones who bring disruption and chaos, while the women are forced into compliance. And when looking at the native born response to immigration, there is an obvious split in how the two genders are responding to the immigration crisis. The women are overwhelmingly in support of the immigrants coming, to the point of fanaticism, while the men are overwhelmingly against it, often to the point of fanaticism. As discussed above, the two genders are barely if at all talking to one another; they may as well exist in different worlds.

To the first point about the immigrant men being the most disruptive, I appreciated Shriver's willingness and ability to show the clash of two cultures where white feminists come face-to-face with non-white cultures that have no respect for women or femininity in general. Domingo and his boys take advantage of Gloria's weakness, her compliance in the face of "people of color," in order to dominate the situation, and it is, well . . . patriarchal—and in a way that white women don't really understand from personal experience.

Nico and his father and his father's friends are all a combination of positions: reactionary and ideologically opposed to immigration. There is both an emotional component, and there are facts and reasoned arguments. At points, it gives you pause. Sometimes, you wonder if some female presence might soften their edges. But the men are nursing these thoughts in isolation. The women are radical in the opposite direction entirely. We are back to the point about the absence of discussion.

Stray Thoughts

When Nico's situationship pairing came out as "non-binary," he asked, what the fuck does that mean? She explained that she was neither a man nor a woman. But he clarified, what did it change about the sex? What do non-binary people do differently in bed? She had no idea.

I also like the acknowledgement that the migrants thought trans ideology was insane. There isn't much strategy behind this leftist immigration push, given how it will wash over many of the other values that the left holds dear—even homosexuality.

I wasn't sure what I felt about the reason for Nico's complacency. He's a kind of synecdoche for Gen Z men in general, but is their complacency by choice, or are there economic issues in place? I've decided not to read into it too much, but this is a thought to consider.

Shout out to Alonso. You know who you are.

Ending

The ending is both predictable and not predictable. You'll have to read it to puzzle that out. Maybe you will end up disagreeing, but it takes a lot of turns that were unexpected, and it lands in a place that just makes you go, "Well . . ."

Conclusion

I honestly think this might have been the greatest book I've read this year. I think I will give this the first, the only, 10/10.

Spoilers

Kidnapping

Where to begin? This book is a slowly unfolding catastrophe. It all starts with Domingo, but the story really takes a nosedive for its characters' prospects when the ransom demand comes. Martine's children are apparently kidnapped, and we still don't know if they actually were (that is the mastery of the writing), and $30,000 is demanded for their release in one month. Martine has no way to cover this. Gloria chooses to do so, after her three children refuse to contribute. Nico and his mother are the only consistent ones in this. This is where the first questions start to pose themselves.

Before I move on to the obvious ones, I brushed upon the idea of altruism earlier in this post. Instances like this are what make me ask why altruism is even appealing in the first place. Relationships where one side is just a sink, and the other side is just a hose, are emblematic of this. And the problem with romanticizing the concept of "altruism" is that people often only describe one side of the relationship, and they do so over the short term. In reality, they are extractive, with the altruistic one being the victim. It's all a matter of how you characterize it.

Back to the ransom demand. At the time, the characters have no idea how to manage the situation. Nico suspects that something is going on, though he has no proof; there is no proof moving in the opposite direction, either. What matters is that he has an actual reason to withhold his funds from the supposedly urgent situation. However, his two sisters also refuse their funds. But they believe the kidnapping happened. They wouldn't dare doubt it. This is where the cracks start to show. Even the mother, who does follow through, is hesitant. The idea of being a proper altruistic leftist is not that appealing, after all.

The Point

Whether the kidnapping was real or not, it led to an escalation, as people in Honduras noticed that the bill was paid; they noticed the money that was in their accounts. And, as is acknowledged in the book, outsiders tend to overestimate the amount of money that Americans actually have.

We first see Alonso show up, a friend or associate of Domingo. And then the rest of Domingo's men show up, and they essentially colonize the house. Gloria should have asked Domingo and Alonso to leave, but her weakness is non-whites, so she just rolls over. And by the time she does work up the nerve to confront them, there are six or more, and they just laugh her off. Most don't even speak English or even try to understand her.

At the end of the day, this is just a metaphor for what is happening in America at large, and especially what could happen in the long term. Open borders policies are perceived as weak by immigrants, and they exploit them in order to force their own way of life in the host country. No assimilation happens. Giving probably the most important speech about American weakness to Alonso was probably the most brilliant choice. It helps emphasize the importance of posture as we invite people to come to America. Do we come to them, or do they come to us? Do they thank us, or do they demand for more, more, more?

Martine

It is possible to see the final moments of the novel as damning for Martine's character, but that is still not the case. One theory that was never entertained by Nico was that she was simply the toy of her husband the whole time. Domingo was the one who schemed to take Gloria's house after learning of her Will, and Martine did not know what was going on in the background. Maybe she did know, but was ordered to stay silent . . . Either way, the interpretation is still up to the reader.

Ending

The fact that Martine and her husband, Domingo, end up getting the house from Gloria after her death is truly poetic. It is even more poetic that this result is because of Gloria's own choice. Americans, especially on the left, have little to no notion of nationhood. They believe that it being a social construct means it should be dissolved and discarded, to bring about some mythical oneness to humanity as a whole. (But only selectively. Nationhood becomes very important when resisting "oppression," "colonialism," "Whiteness," and the like.) Gloria, just like America, gives up her foundations, her land, and even her life—but only after it becomes far too late.

Conclusion

I honestly think this might have been the greatest book I've read this year. I think I will give this the first, the only, 10/10.

Video: https://youtu.be/U6isEUu9Y4I

Other Shriver Review: https://youtu.be/52HtTmFLmhQ

It was actually Spain: https://derechadiario.com.ar/us/argentina/spanish-woman-fled-her-home-out-of-fear-after-sheltering-illegal-maghrebi-immigrant