A Better Life

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 she claims to be.

Gloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her twenty-six-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. But as Martine’s disturbingly dodgy compatriots begin to show up, Nico conceives a dark twin. Is she really the nicest person in the world, or a manipulative, dangerous liar? Hostile to both his mother’s altruism and the “migrant crisis” in general, Nico 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.