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tv   Meet the Author  BBC News  March 12, 2017 7:45pm-8:01pm GMT

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beating italy 28 points to five in parma. they ran in four first—half tries to earn the bonus point win — and condemn bottom of the table italy to a fourth straight defeat in this year's competition. between england or ireland will to take the title. exeter chiefs will face leicester tigers in the anglo—welsh final, after a hard fought 24—7 win over harlequins. it's the third consecutive year that the chiefs have reached the final. they scored four tries — two inside the opening 15 minutes of the game. winger max bodilly grabbing the second. the final will take place next sunday at the twickenham stoop. marco fu and judd trump are into the final session of the players championship final. marco fu went into it leading 5—4. it is the first who gets to ten. judd trump has taken the first frame of the evening, squaring it at 5—5. could
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be set for a late finish in north wales. great britain's adam yates has pulled out of the tirreno—adriatico cycle race, retiring on stage five due to sickness, he started the day in second position. yates had begun the stage just 33 seconds behind colombia's nairo quintana in the overall standings, but abandoned the race with about 45 miles to go. stage five was won by the world champion, slovakia's peter sagan, with welsh rider geraint thomas behind him infourth, now sixth overall. elise christie has become a triple world speed skating champion. yesterday she became the first british woman to win a world title when she took gold in the 1500m. today she added a gold in the iooom, bronze in the 3000m and claimed the overall title. one final piece of news. northern ireland chris meek has won the rally
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of mexico, his fourth in a world rally championship event. that is it from me. more sport on the bbc news channel throughout the evening. now it's time for meet the author with rebecca jones. for much of her career, lionel shriver scribbled in obscurity, and those are her words, not mine. then her seventh novel hit the big time. we need to talk about kevin won the orange prize for fiction in 2005 and made her name. lionel shriver‘s latest book is called the mandibles, and it's set during a financial crisis in america during the near future. at its heart are four generations of a once wealthy family who must deal with the loss of their fortune and then learn to survive as the dollar collapses, inflation soars and the economy spirals out of control. lionel shriver, you wrote
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the mandibles in 2015, and the picture you paint of america is pretty bleak. revisiting it now as it comes out in paperback, what are your thoughts? well, it's bleaker now! one of the striking things about revisiting this book after the release of the hardback in the spring of 2016 is obviously we now have a new president, and not the president we expected. so there's a feeling of not quite being overtaken by events, because what happened in the book has not happened yet. we haven't faced economic collapse. in fact, quite to the contrary, the stock market is going through the roof, though i'm not convinced it will stay there. but certainly interest in dystopias,
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in dystopian fiction, has picked up enormously, and i think the entire landscape of reality has changed, if that's not being a little overdramatic. in that what we consider possible has changed. donald trump was initially not going to get elected. the idea of his being president was farcical. and now look. and ditto with brexit. as you say, it is a dystopian novel, set in 2029 predominantly, in the near future. but this isn't a future of lizards running down 5th ave and zombies in flying cars. it's a world in many ways that is very recognisable to us. how deliberate was that? very deliberate. in fact, i kept the technological innovation to a minimum. there is a little bit, because of course things do move on, but i didn't want the reader's focus to be on gadgets, so i tried to keep the changes between now and then quite modest.
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i did insert things — there was a major cyber catastrophe in 2024, which i think is highly likely. but i wanted you to be able to walk into this book as if from the next room. and we see what happens to one particular family, the mandibles, and how what they take for granted and perhaps what many of us take for granted is gradually eroded. a cabbage suddenly costs $20. you can't get hold of olive oil and wine. and by the end of the book, it's $40. yes, there you go. yes. i wanted to go on that nitty—gritty household level. so there's more than one scene in this book that takes place in a supermarket. and the supermarket becomes
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a strangely political place. which it is, rather, because it has to do with our primitive survival. and what people regard as necessary to their primitive survival varies according to income level, so that most middle to upper middle classes would consider having to live without olive oil an absolute outrage. i mean, one of the things that people start hoarding and therefore becomes unavailable is loo roll. this is a major crisis. indeed. and one that you examine in the book when we have a shortage of it. you explore america's collapse through this one family, and it's not the first time you've explored big issues through one family. i wonder why you did that. well, i think it's a good route in to an issue, and one of the things that happens when an economy breaks down is that civil structures break down, and relationships
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between people break down. on many different levels. as a nation, you can stop functioning, as a city or a neighbourhood you can stop functioning, and as a family you can stop functioning. and you put enough stresses on people, and i do design the plot so that little by little, everyone ends up in the same house. yes. and they don't get along, right? so that's a festival for fiction. there is one character in this book, nollie, who is a bestselling writer, like you, who has lived away from the united states for several decades, like you, and indeed her name is an anagram of lionel. why did you want to insert yourself in the novel? well, partly for fun. i'd written enough books by then, ifigured i'd earned a little self reference. did you enjoy?
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i had a ball with it. i used all the truly atrocious working titles of my real books for the titles of her books, and she's an exercise fanatic, and annoys everyone by doing star jumps on an upperfloor, pound, pound, pound. and you do them? yes. although by this time she's 72 and really doesn't have a hope in hell of looking any better as a consequence! so it was partlyjust to take the mickey out of myself. but it was also, and there was a slight political intention in that this book, i have to confess, in some ways, economically anyway, demonises the baby boomer generation, of which i am a member. and so i was putting myself in the book partly to admit, well, i'm the kind of person that younger generations are going to have to carry, and so it was a kind of mea culpa. the mandibles is your 12th novel.
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you'd been writing novels and getting published and reviewed, and then you had this an enormous success with we need to talk about kevin. is it true, by the way, that that book was turned down by 30 publishers? in the uk, yes. it was also turned down by 20 different agents in the united states. so what kept you going? uh... bloody—mindedness. spite. ok, you were determined. i will show them! and you did. it certainly wasn't artistic fervour. and then, as i say, it was this enormous success. is that only a blessing, or does it bring its own pressures with it? well, for a while, it did oblige me to revisit a book that i felt i had moved on from. and that got a little bit trying, although i always had to be mindful not to complain, because all my professional life, i had been waiting for a book to hit it big, so once i got what i claimed i wanted, i had to keep my mouth shut.
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i'm still proud of that book. every once in a while i have to go back to it and read a scene or a passage, and sometimes i think, hm, not so bad. you tackle some pretty big subjects in your books, including this one. and you've written about the health care system in america and obesity, to name a couple of others. how do you pick your subjects? ijust look for something that i have a strong reaction to, you know. and i'm not necessarily obliged in my own book to pick something controversial or in the headlines. although i sometimes do. but i'm just looking for something that i have a strong emotional reaction to. lionel shriver, you always give us
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plenty to talk about. thank you so much. pleasure. the weekend has brought a mix of weather. on saturday some of us saw the sunshine in the west on sunday but tonight, ings on looking mostly dry and will be turning cold with clear skies from west to east. weather fronts will be kept at bay so dry unsettled weather over the next few days. we have cloud and patchy rain in scotland and northern ireland tonight. england and wales stick with clearer skies. temperatures in the towns and cities down to 5 degrees, but quite cold in
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rural spots and in some places temperatures just above freezing, certainly low enough for a touch of frost on monday morning. but plenty of sunshine across southern england and wales, from 8am, monday morning basis. a fresh feeling morning. further north, perhaps the odd spot of rain in north—west england, where it will be cloudy and slightly cloudy in southern scotland but spells of sunshine working across northern ireland and scotland would generally light winds and breezy in the far north. moving through the day, cloud bringing spots of rain. to the south and east, a fine day with light winds and feeling warm. further north, a decent looking day and predominantly dry. monday evening looking drive that rain in
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parts of scotland. on tuesday, the area of high pressure in the south, south west, and a weather front tries to make its way in from the north—west, bringing cloud and some outbreaks of rain and the wind is a feature, particularly in the north. in the northern isles, we could see gusts up to 70 mph. temperatures are gained mild, up to about 15, possibly 16, but a blustery day. wednesday, high pressure and a largely dry day. not as windy as tuesday. this is bbc news. the headlines at 8pm. the brexit secretary urges mps to back the bill for exiting the eu to pave the way for the triggering of article 50. what we can't have is either house of parliament reversing the decision of the british people. the iraqi army continues to make gains against
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so—called islamic state. we've heard three car bombs going on in the distance, we've also had a lot of incoming mortarfire, you can hear now the sounds of battle. following a night of violence in rotterdam, turkey's president warns the netherlands it will "pay the price" for expelling for expelling his foreign minister. at least 48 people have been killed in a landslide at a vast rubbish dump in ethiopia.
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