Lionel Shriver

You can't fail, right?

No pressure whatsoever.

Your life is calm.

Nico has so little to do with other people that he has deleted the calendar app on his phone.

And when I was writing this character, I came to see his point of view, that being an adult is hard.

Assuming responsibility, especially for your own life, can feel onerous.

And as long as you can get away with it, I can see just resigning from adulthood, right?

And this is typical of a certain kind of young person now.

And I think we've gone through a couple of generations where a percentage, and I think it's especially been a problem with men, a percentage of that generation has tried to hide under the bed.

Yes, there's an exchange in the book between Nico and an old friend of his that he hasn't seen in a long time.

His friend, he's the grown-up.

He's the alternative.

He has a job.

He has a career.

He's going to get married.

He wants children.

Wow.

Where'd you come from?

And his friend says, you know, Nico, I don't know, you were really popular in high school.

how have you, why have you stalled?