"The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047", published in May 2016, is set in a near-future in which the United States is unable to repay its national debt and Mexico has built a wall on its northern border to keep out US citizens trying to escape with their savings. Members of the moneyed Mandible family must contend with disappointment and struggle to survive after the inheritance they had been counting on turns out to have turned to ash. A sister bemoans a shortage of olive oil, while another has to absorb strays into her increasingly cramped household. Her oddball teenage son Willing, an economics autodidact, looks as if he can save the once august family from the streets. The novel was "not science fiction", Shriver told BBC Radio 4's "Front Row" on May 9, 2016. It is an "acid satire" in which "everything bad that could happen ... has happened" according to the review in the "Literary Review".