Ella Whelan talks to novelist Lionel Shriver:
I ask her if she’s worried about the lack of different perspectives, about the conformism of contemporary culture. ‘No. It bores me’, she says. ‘So I guess in that sense it worries me. I read a great many more books than I write and I feel a sense of investment in what people are writing because I want to read good books. And when they all hew to the same rules, it puts me to sleep. I think it is unfortunate that novelists, especially in the UK and the US, tend to stick to the same political ideology, which is left of centre. They all believe the same things. And I think that’s dreary. I deliberately expose my own politics in my new novel, and in some others, because my politics don’t hew to the current orthodoxy. And sometimes I’m punished for it.
