With the surprise acceptance of Brexit this past week, it’s only fitting that I review a book about the collapse of the American financial system and its singular effect on a formerly well-to-do, all-WASP family. “But you can’t close a country like a business,” says Willing, a teenager trying to make sense of the mess. “You can’t throw up your hands and say, too bad, guess ‘the experiment’ didn’t work. People my age have a long time left to live.” Everybody, even the older folks, feels the same way. Why did this happen, and why did it happen to them?

In THE MANDIBLES, Lionel Shriver takes her usual specific observance abilities to focus on the economy, envisioning a near future in which the dollar collapses and the great USA becomes a pariah state. Even the name of the family seems to represent what has happened to every good citizen. They’ve been chewed up and spit out by a system that could no longer handle the way they like to live. Focusing on the 1%, Shriver shows us just how far down they will fall if this situation were to occur in real life. It’s 2029, a full century after the first Great Depression, and the Mandibles are sitting happily in fancy digs enjoying a family fortune created over two generations earlier from the manufacture of diesel engines. Though the rest of the family sees little trickle-down --- a source of great resentment to Douglas’ son, Carter, who is pushing 70 and still waiting for his inheritance --- they are dismayed wholeheartedly when they realize that there is no security for them.

"THE MANDIBLES is a fantastically written novel that offers an interesting futureshock scenario that could serve as a warning to us all."

Now the dollar is replaced by new reserve currency called the bancor (an international monetary unit originally proposed by John Maynard Keynes). It is administered by a Russian- and Chinese-led consortium of countries that has nothing to do with the United States. In the well-quoted words of Dante Alvarado, America’s first Latino president, he is forced to lock down his country in a state of “fiscal warfare.” Gold and bancors are sparingly allowed to individuals. Citizens can’t leave the country with more than $100 in cash. When Alvarado declares a “reset” on the national debt, he renders all treasury bonds void. The Mandible fortune is disintegrated in a minute.

The family must survive indignities large and small, the price of olive oil, the caring for aging relatives since assisted living is too expensive, and the fact that no one knows what comes next aside from more bad times. Their former selfishness and the new generosity that they must learn to cultivate become the yin and yang of the novel. The Mandibles’ story provides little comfort to the reader in terms of how such a situation could turn around. Instead, it is clear that the only ways for them to improve their station are those of a less exciting and Golden Age mentality. Having given up such luscious trappings against their will, it is a difficult journey, but Shriver has the keen wit and ability to find the most poignant moments in the Mandibles’ situation. With that, we are treated to a hyper-realistic look at the possibility that exists all too firmly in our futures. Each character is forced to use both their natural personalities and abilities and their former selves to make everything old new again, less shiny but still harboring a life force that is worth feeding.

THE MANDIBLES is a fantastically written novel that offers an interesting futureshock scenario that could serve as a warning to us all. Maybe it’s time to cultivate the love and consideration necessary for the hard times now before they happen --- and Shriver’s lovely work can be the new bible for this brave new world order.