Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, op-eds, speeches, reviews, and unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver’s piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes. With her characteristically frank manner, she shrewdly skewers the concept of language “crimes,” while chafing at arbitrary limitations on speech and literature that crimp artistic expression and threaten intellectual freedom. She also offers insights on her novels and the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. Each essay in this book reflects sentiments that have “brought hell and damnation down on my head,” she cheerfully explains.