Award-winning novelist Lionel Shriver grew up in the South, decamped for Ireland, and eventually settled in London. Come summer, though, the ex-pat returns stateside to Brooklyn, N.Y. The author of “We Need to Talk About Kevin’’ has never entirely left her native country in her fiction either. Her newest, “The Mandibles,’’ is set in New York City about a decade into the future.

BOOKS: Which British authors do you wish were better known in the United States?

SHRIVER: I just recently read “Pier Falls,’’ Mark Haddon’s new short-story collection. It’s good. I think Matthew Kneale’s “English Passengers’’ should be a classic. It’s one of my favorite books. I don’t think of myself as someone who is big on historical novels, but some of my favorites are.

BOOKS: What other historical novels have you liked?

SHRIVER: One of the other British books that has been criminally overlooked in the US is “As Meat Loves Salt’’ by Maria McCann. It’s set during the 17th-century English civil war. It’s about a gay affair in Cromwell’s army. That book is really sexy.

BOOKS: How do you pick what you are going to read?

SHRIVER: This is kind of hypocritical because I have a novelist character in my new book, but I avoid books that have protagonists that are writers, especially if they are novelists. It seems incredibly lazy. I’m also not interested in murder or in classic crime fiction. That’s such well-trod territory, it’s unlikely to be original. I am drawn to smart premises. I really enjoyed John Lanchester’s “Capital,’’ which is about people on one street who all start getting anonymous postcards with the same message. That’s a tight, sharp premise that is likely to bear fruit.

BOOKS: Are there characters that have stuck with you over time?

SHRIVER: There’s something about the character in Graham Greene’s “The Heart of the Matter,’’ something mournful and sad about that character. I’ve read close to all of Greene. When I was in my 20s I would read everything an author wrote. It was a good habit.

BOOKS: Whom did you do that with?

SHRIVER: Hemingway, Edith Wharton, Kurt Vonnegut, Faulkner. I was young. I could read for longer periods of time. It’s much harder for me to become engrossed in a novel now. When it does happen, I get all excited.

BOOKS: When’s the last time that happened?

SHRIVER: T.C. Boyle’s “The Harder They Come.’’ I’m a huge Boyle fan. I think he and I have a lot in common. He does a lot of experimentation with form. You can’t peg him.

BOOKS: In high school, which classic did you have the hardest time reading?

SHRIVER: I remember not being able to bear George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.’’ It’s possible it’s good, but it was a complete turn off for a 16-year-old. But I also hated being told what to read. I used to sit in class with a book in my lap and secretly read. Reading was private. It was an indulgence.

BOOKS: Do you keep books in both of your homes?

SHRIVER: Of course. That’s one of the things I change in “The Mandibles.’’ It becomes uncool to have physical books. It’s seen as trashy looking.

BOOKS: Do you see that as a real possibility?

SHRIVER: It’s a real possibility, and that would be a real loss. There’s something about the physicality of anything that makes it more important. A digital file is easily lost and forgotten. I’m more likely to remember reading the books that I own. I went though a long phase of checking books out of the library. I don’t remember those books. But it’s not a bad idea to get rid of bad books. The last time I moved I culled out the ones I hated. I remember joyously tossing out Norman Mailer’s “The Castle in the Forest,’’ which has to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read.

BOOKS: Don’t you find the hatred for a book to be a unique hatred?

SHRIVER: It’s a resentful hatred. It’s an experience of thievery because your time was stolen, time when you could have been reading a good book.

AMY SUTHERLAND

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