After decades of toiling in anonymity, novelist Lionel Shriver, a North Carolina-born, globe-trotting expatriate who lives in London, turned heads in 2003 with the publication of "We Need to Talk About Kevin." The horrifying and engrossing portrayal of an ambivalent mother and her homicidal son was spurned by dozens of agents and publishing houses. (They were not finding the narrator "sufficiently attractive," Shriver said.) It eventually found a home at Counterpoint, won the Orange Prize and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Shriver followed up in 2007 with "The Post-Birthday World" (HarperCollins), a cleverly crafted "what-if?" tale of marital fidelity and infidelity set in London. The paperback reissue brings Shriver back to these shores for a six-city tour. We caught up with her by phone before her visit to Minnesota.

Q Given how many times "We Need to Talk About Kevin" was rejected, how do you account for its enormous success?

A Certainly I don't credit the school killings [a culminating plot development in the novel]. I don't think it's that aspect that breaks ground or even the reason why people read it. ... In fact the main reason I wanted to write the book is the reason why people want to buy it. And that is that it's an exploration of motherhood and parenthood in general with no sentimentality, without the rose-colored glasses. ... You don't get much representation of a parent who is truly exasperated with the experience of having a child and who sometimes experiences either absence of love or outright dislike. And I think that's a common experience, even if you do love your children. You have these moments where you just want them to go away. I'm sure my parents had that in relation to me; I remember having been intolerable.

Q You do have this very gift, in your novels, of exposing the terrible things we think and feel but do not say -- jealousy, boredom, pettiness, antipathy. Do you understand your compulsion to do that?

A You remind me of something my mother used to say to me and my younger brother. "Oh, you kids, you're so negative." It was a mantra of our childhood. I guess I still am. I find the underbelly of people more interesting. It might be good for my soul to write a little more about people's finer qualities. Right now I'm doing some of that in my new novel [about illness and death, American health care and money]. My protagonist has "good character," as we say. But I haven't done much of that. I have generally been interested in what's wrong with people. Partly because I find what's wrong with people to be endearing.

Q What does it mean, in life and in fiction, to have been raised by a Presbyterian minister?

A It has made me rebellious -- a little bit of an iconoclast. And at the same time, whether I like it or not, imbued me with a strong sense of morality. I'm very conscious of right and wrong, but I have a skewed sensibility so I don't think right or wrong are obvious. I have an aversion to sanctimony. And that doesn't mean I'm not as sanctimonious as the rest of them. I just don't like it, and when I catch myself I don't like myself. ... People confuse righteousness with self-interest and goodness with ego. I may be involved with right and wrong, but to me it's a mire. It's these people who are filled with moral certainty that you have to be afraid of. They're often egomaniacs. A lot of people who think of themselves as godly are actually thinking of themselves as little gods.

Q Did "The Post-Birthday World" upset your adopted British compatriots with any of its characterizations, cultural observations or the use of dialect?

A There were some lovely exceptions, but for the most part the Brits jumped all over this book. And I knew it was going to happen. In retrospect I wasn't thinking this way when I was writing, but once I was facing publication I realized I had designed a bull's-eye on my forehead. I could have painted it myself. It's territorial: The book is set in London. It has a British character who speaks with a south London vernacular. On top of that I helped myself to snooker, an actual British sport. So it was one big, "Get off our patch." There is, of course, a total double standard, because British writers ... are perfectly happy to set whole books in this country and never think twice.

Q Given all that, why do you stay in England? Are the muses there different from the muses here?

A I'm of two minds right now about staying. I haven't resolved this one. But I like living out of the United States at least a good portion of the time. I find it intellectually and critically fruitful. It gives me a little more perspective ... and keeps my world larger.

Q You have a seemingly limitless word hoard -- lively and packed with little-used verbs. Where did you get that?

A I owe my parents a lot. They're literate people, well-educated, and they used a large vocabulary when I was growing up. So I was just a little sponge. They did me an enormous favor by not talking down to me -- or by talking over my head.

Sarah T. Williams is the Star Tribune Books editor.