It wasn't just about how personal the story is Shriver, while never less than whip-smart on the page, is at her best when she's advancing a dread-filled plot, and from the rueful tone that pervades the book, it is clear that Pandora will lose something by the end, whether it's her husband, sibling or the wacky business that's made her wealthy (imagine American Girl dolls for adults of both sexes, with pull strings that spout mocking statements).

But I couldn't look away - 'Big Brother' is a page-turner. I read 'Big Brother' with the kind of fascinated horror that greets 386-pound Edison when he's out in public, which is to say I didn't exactly feel right about my absorption. It turns out to be Edison, grown so fat that she doesn't immediately recognize 'the round face, its features stretched as if painted on a balloon.' Arriving to pick her brother up at the airport, she hears passengers from his flight grousing about the obese person they'd had to sit next to. Oppressed to some extent by her ultra-fit, health nut husband, Fletcher, Pandora reflects on how eager she is to have 'company with appetite' (once a caterer, she loves to cook). They haven't seen each other in years but when she learns that Edison is down on his luck, Pandora sends him a plane ticket to Iowa. In 'Big Brother,' Shriver tells the story of middle-aged, middle-America dwelling Pandora and her much cherished older brother Edison, a jazz pianist who has lived a determinedly hip life in New York. Shriver is never going to be a vulnerable writer - this literary porcupine has quills on her quills - but her mea culpa of a novel may be as close as she comes to sweetness.

While filled with the type of savage wit and social commentary that made 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' and 'The Post-Birthday World' so popular with critics and readers, 'Big Brother' is a different animal. Her new novel, 'Big Brother,' is born of Shriver's heartbreak and frustration and, it is safe to assume, her anger over not being able to save her brother. In a dreadful coincidence, Shriver's brother, Greg, died of cardiac arrest just hours after she'd filed the essay. 'My brother is eating himself to death,' she wrote.

In late 2009, novelist Lionel Shriver wrote an essay about obesity and 'fat acceptance.' It was a highly personal column framed around Shriver's feelings about her brother, who weighed, she wrote, about 330 pounds.

Lionel shriver brother