Shriver

Fiction. Chris Belden's SHRIVER is a hoot, a farce about mistaken identity set at a writers' conference where facile poets and pompous novelists declaim, carouse and, possibly, commit murder. In a style somewhere between Evelyn Waugh and Mel Brooks, Belden's satire lampoons all things literary but also, amazingly, convinces us to care about the fools that these mortals be.