In ‘Mania,’ Lionel Shriver skewers the present anti-intellectual moment in a not-so-alternative account of the past

Enter Pearson Converse, the defiant, stubborn, and very much out-of-favor center of Shriver’s new novel “ Mania. ” The story is set in an alternative recent past, in which Western society, led by the US, has decided there is no such thing as being smart. The Mental Parity movement cracks down hard on anyone who uses the S-word — that would be “stupid” — and insists that those who can’t cogitate as well as others are merely engaging in “alternative processing.” School admissions standards have been relegated to the dustbin...