‘I am white rice’ states Pandora Half-danarson, narrator of Lionel Shriver’s obesity fable. ‘I have always existed to set off more exciting fare.’ The exciting fare on offer is the big brother of the title, the handsome, free-wheeling, jive-talking Edison, a jazz pianist.
The siblings grew up in LA, their dysfunctional family life paralleled, almost parodied, in Joint Custody, a prime-time television drama scripted by Travis Appaloosa, their smarmy, self-aggrandising father. This prolonged and subtle betrayal drives Pandora to seek anonymity in quiet Iowa, while Edison, in bohemian New York, craves public attention, and trades on his father’s fame to attain it. Edison uses the stagey ‘Appaloosa’ as his surname, while Pandora sticks with the cumbersome but authentic ‘Halfdanarson’.
But the roles find a way of reversing themselves. Pandora, as an only half-affectionate joke against her control-freak husband Fletcher, invents a ring-pull doll, a mini-me tailored to mimic the verbal tics and catch-phrases of the recipient.
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