"I'll keep it simple, then. How much better are our lives going to get than they are right now? What are the chances that everything gets worse from here on out? Not only a bit worse. Loads worse?" "One hundred percent," Cyril said.
Lionel Shriver, Should We Stay or Should We Go (HarperCollins 2021)
Shriver is one of the few contemporary author whose new books I look forward to. Should We Stay or Should We Go starts off with an agreement between Cyril and Kay Wilkinson in London that they will commit suicide together when they have both reached 80, thirty years away in 2020; among other reasons they don't want to end up with the dementia that Cyril's father suffered for years, dominating Kay and Cyril's life. Shriver then gives us a dozen versions of what happens next: Kay goes through with it but Cyril doesn't; Cyril does but Kay doesn't; Kay reveals the plan to her daughter just as Kay turns 80 and Cyril and Kay are committed to Close of the Day Cottages, a horrible nursing home, for the rest of their lives; they voluntarily go to a posh nursing home, Journey's End, where Kay dies and Cyril lives to ninety-three with locked-in syndrome; a drug is discovered --Retorgarifax --that means nobody ever dies; they get frozen by a company called Sleeping Beauties and wake up in a world strange to them, without their love for each other; they both live to 110 and die together peacefully at their own wake.
Each alternate reality is presented both logically and imaginatively: Cyril and Kay go through Brexit (one votes to stay, the other to leave) and the coronavirus and crises with their three children while always maintaining their love for each other. Shriver examines with intelligence and humor the various ways one can grow older and the advantages and disadvantages of doing so, as one's body changes in ways it is usually impossible to control.
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