In a provocative novel addressing contemporary immigration by the sharply observant Lionel Shriver, a New York family takes in a Honduran migrant— who may or may not be the innocent paragon she claims to be.
Gloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her 26-year-old son Nico in a sprawling house in Brooklyn, decides to participate in a new city program that would pay her to take in a migrant as a boarder. Liberal to the extreme, Gloria is thrilled when sweet, kind, helpful Martine arrives. But Nico is skeptical. A classic live-at-home Gen Zer with no interest in adulthood, Nico resents any interruption of his “ hovercraft repose. ”
As the months go by, Martine endears herself to both Nico’ s sisters, while finding her way into Gloria’ s heart and even, briefly, Nico’ s. But as Martine’ s disturbingly dodgy compatriots begin to show up, Nico conceives a dark twin hostile to both his mother’ s altruism and the “ migrant crisis” in general— and turns out to be anything but a reliable narrator himself.
Based loosely on a program New York City Mayor Eric Adams floated but did not initiate, A Better Life is Lionel Shriver at her best: smart, funny, and sensitive to the moral nuances of perhaps the most divisive issue of our times.
