![]() ![]() We first meet this hard-working Brooklyn contractor packing to make the escape to Africa he has long dreamed of and meticulously planned. ![]() I doubt whether Shriver intended that echo she’s the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, and schadenfreude informs her writing more than any joy in others’ happiness - but the Yiddish allusion lends a bracingly ironic ring to the burdens that poor Shep will have to schlep before naches steps in to rescue him. We’ll get to the relevance of that, but anyone with a casual acquaintance with Yiddish may also hear in Shep’s evocative moniker echoes of the term schlep naches, which loosely translates as deriving pleasure from the achievements of others. In bygone England, a knacker was someone who bought burned-out farm animals for conversion into fertilizer. Toward the end of her gleefully mutinous new novel, “So Much for That,” Lionel Shriver reveals the provenance of her beleaguered protagonist’s name, Shep Knacker. ![]()
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