★ 04/05/2021
Shriver (The Motion of the Body Through Space) delivers on a high-concept premise full of alternative narratives based around themes of illness and aging. In 1991, over a “fateful sherry,” Londoners Cyril and Kay Wilkinson, both still in perfectly good health, make a pact to end their lives when they turn 80 (she, in 2020; he, in 2021). There is no satire or irony in Cyril’s Swiftean “modest proposal,” as Shriver terms it. Rather, they’re propelled by watching Kay’s parents linger through years of dementia, going from “deterioration” to “degradation” toward an intolerable decline that they don’t want for themselves. Shriver tackles the next decades until their “use-by” date with her usual aplomb, offering 12 alternate scenarios. (It is not a spoiler to reveal that in some instances they live well beyond their 80s.) Years progress from the “surprising to the implausible” to the “incredible” and the “impossible” as the Wilkinsons balk and consider every possibility from assisted living to cryogenics, debating the free choice to end one’s life and the purpose or value of living. There is sometimes outlandish humor and periods of magical thinking in their dialogue, all rendered to brilliant effect. Readers will be entranced by Shriver’s freewheeling meditation on mortality and human agency. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (June)
"A wild romp," — Bookreporter.com
“Shriver said that her favourite novels are those that pack both an intellectual and emotional punch. With Should We Stay or Should We Go, she’s added triumphantly to their number.” — The Times (UK)
"Her best novel since The Post-Birthday World . . . . A return to form, merging Shriver's better instincts as both novelist and social critic." — Kirkus Reviews
“This sharp-elbowed satire is also a brusquely tender portrait of enduring love.” — Washington Post
“A delight to read. . . . Wildly inventive and sometimes hilarious . . . Shriver may be a contrarian—but she has a sense of humor about it. More to the point, she never lets her politics interfere with the sheer zest of her imagination.” — Seattle Times
“I think Shriver’s novels are wonderful . . . fun, smart and, perhaps because of their author’s unconventional political views, unlike anything else you’ll read.” — Financial Times
"Shriver delivers on a high-concept premise full of alternative narratives based around themes of illness and aging. . . . Readers will be entranced by Shriver's freewheeling meditation on mortality and human agency." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Entertaining and poignant." — Daily Mail
“Very moving . . . Shriver has the magic ability to make the reader invested in the fate—fates, I should say—of her characters.” — Daily Telegraph (London)
06/04/2021
In 1991, when Kay Wilkinson's father dies after a long decline into dementia, Kay's husband Cyril proposes that they spare themselves, their children, and the National Health Service a similar fate by agreeing to do themselves in when they turn 80. Because Cyril is a little older than Kay, they will wait until her 80th birthday. The years fly by, and suddenly it is 2020. Kay's birthday arrives in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which puts an end to any plans for fond farewells. Instead, the Wilkinsons prepare a favorite dinner, pour some wine, and ready the pills. Will they or won't they go through with it? It doesn't give much away to say that one does and one doesn't. Because no sooner does this particular story reach its conclusion than the rug is pulled out, and a new version with a different ending presents itself. Then comes another version and another and another. Some of these scenarios are hopeful, while others are macabre. VERDICT As an exercise in possibility--how any of us may reach old age and face death--this novel is sometimes prophetic, sometimes preposterous, but never boring.—Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
2021-04-17
Is it a good idea to kill yourself before you become elderly and burdensome? Shriver considers the possibilities.
After more than a decade of often sour, scolding fiction, Shriver has written her best novel since The Post-Birthday World (2007), in no small part because it revisits that book’s alternate-timeline conceit. In 1991, Kay, an interior designer, and Cyril, a physician with Britain's National Health Service, are dispirited by the death of Kay’s father from dementia. So they agree that on Kay’s 80th birthday, in 2020, they’ll take fatal doses of Seconal. In successive chapters, Shriver imagines a dozen ways this plan plays out, or doesn’t. Kay has second thoughts and is struck dead by a delivery van anyhow; or Cyril does and meets a similarly dim fate. Elsewhere, they decide to play out their dotage in a spendy retirement home, or their children discover the plan and have the couple banished to a dismal institution. More wildly, Shriver imagines scenarios in which a drug for immortality is discovered or the couple enter a cryogenic deep-freeze and reemerge to a transformed human race or suffer in a dystopian England overrun by migrants. Shriver is still Shriver, using her characters to grumble about Brexit, Covid, monetary policy, and political correctness. (“Please tell me you’re not listening to that Shriver woman,” Kay groans to Cyril. “She’s a hysteric. And so annoyingly smug, as if she wants civilization to collapse.”) But a novel with multiple tendrils means she doesn’t get locked into one point of view, and, as in The Post-Birthday World, the multiple perspectives produce a tender and complex portrait of the central couple. Mortality, Shriver finds, needn’t be morbid; one of her imagined futures is downright pleasant and testifies to humanity’s adaptability. It reads a bit awkwardly, but that'll happen when a writer tries something new.
A return to form, merging Shriver’s better instincts as both novelist and social critic.
I think Shriver’s novels are wonderful . . . fun, smart and, perhaps because of their author’s unconventional political views, unlike anything else you’ll read.
"Entertaining and poignant."
This sharp-elbowed satire is also a brusquely tender portrait of enduring love.
Shriver said that her favourite novels are those that pack both an intellectual and emotional punch. With Should We Stay or Should We Go, she’s added triumphantly to their number.
Very moving . . . Shriver has the magic ability to make the reader invested in the fate—fates, I should say—of her characters.
A delight to read. . . . Wildly inventive and sometimes hilarious . . . Shriver may be a contrarian—but she has a sense of humor about it. More to the point, she never lets her politics interfere with the sheer zest of her imagination.
"A wild romp,"
"Entertaining and poignant."
I think Shriver’s novels are wonderful . . . fun, smart and, perhaps because of their author’s unconventional political views, unlike anything else you’ll read.
This sharp-elbowed satire is also a brusquely tender portrait of enduring love.
