The only reason it's NOT a 5, is that I had difficulty with the premise of the plot, which actually resolves itself in the last 15 pages. She doesn't like the publicity, but loves her "big, lobotomised" house in Iowa, her craftsman husband and his two teenage children. Pandora puts her marriage on hold and moves into an apartment with her brother and becomes his weight-loss coach. Although still prone to hectoring, she examines America's "alarmingly large underclass", in which obesity "had become a social issue on top of a personal one", with surprising compassion. Pandora gains access to the bathroom, where she finds the toilet brimming, "turds scattered all over the floor", balls of faecal matter shooting out of the bathroom door before she has a chance to close it behind her.

As Pandora rushes to sort him – and the mess – out, he confesses everything: there are no gigs, no career, nothing. Not to mention the fact that his gaining just over 200 pounds in 4 years does not actually match up with what he supposedly eats in a day.

Shriver's writing and observations are often profound and challenging, but I can't quite shake the feelings of being somewhat manipulated as I read. I did, however, chuckle at her use of the phrase "But, to my horror," because I could imagine almost any Shriver character using that phrase, despite their differences. Pandora herself also needs to lose a few pounds so there's lots of issues in this family on the psychology of food addiction, both the good and bad. Then, to make matters even worse, she uses this cheap plot device at the end that made me feel like I totally wasted my time reading the story. So I was looking forward to reading her new book "Big Brother," particularly since it deals with an issue that (unfortunately) is near and dear to my heart - being overweight.

I know nothing about the siblings' childhood that would lead me to believe they were, as they narrator insists, each other's crutches and very intertwined during a difficult time. A pretty engrossing and at times heartbreaking read with a finish which, I kind of saw as a cop-out, so'll be interested to hear / read what others think. It's about the whole queasy lexicon of addiction – as well as the way one addiction is almost always (and maybe inevitably) replaced by another. The plot is that she is going to leave her two teenage children and her husband, get an apartment nearby, live with her brother for a year to help him lose his weight. However, when Pandora picks Edison up from the airport, he is 300 pounds larger than when she last saw him.

As ever Shriver's prose his peerless, as it is absorbing as she draws in to this first person, Pandora narrated tale of looking for something to really live for; of families and if there's a line past which we can't help them; and the impact of our nurture. If we were driving exactly two blocks away, the journey stirred the same amalgam of optimism and anxiety as starting out on a poorly equipped slog of daunting distance during which conditions were bound to turn nasty, unanticipated obstacles could prove insurmountable, and rations-this much is certain-would grow perilously sparse. And this was all in addition to our confectioner's sugar, which Edison was spooning straight from the box. I have sung the praises of the excellent We Need to Talk About Kevin and even recommended it multiple times to my most literary friend, Haley (even though she still hasn't read it.

In an interview, which is included in the end of the novel, she says that when she decided to go with "option d", it changed how she wrote the book because she then wrote Part II as especially unbelievable. Soon Edison’s slovenly habits, appalling diet, and know-it-all monologues are driving Pandora and her fitness-freak husband Fletcher insane. Like the Kevin book, I found it an interesting way of confronting ambivalence to those we "love" - what are the limits of what we should do/sacrifice for each other?The main character, Pandora, is a successful business woman who has created a whimsical, internet-age toy company for grown-ups. When her brother Edison, an accomplished jazz pianist, arrives for a visit, Pandora cannot believe how obese her brother has become. Pandora Halfdanarson lives with her husband, 'food fascist' Fletcher, and her two teenage stepchildren in Iowa. Then come two stark moments of truth: first, Edison breaks Fletcher's most precious (albeit unusable) piece of furniture, a sin for which the latter cannot muster forgiveness.

Big Brother deals with a complex subject and is one you'd like to talk about with a friend or anyone for that matter. I don’t want to say too much and spoil it for others, but when I think about the book, I’m still feeling like I’ve had the rug pulled out from underneath me!Well, now that I’ve read Big Brother by Lionel Shriver, I’ve realized that her book has made me a more sympathetic human being.