Should we stay or should we go?

Should we stay or should we go?, Lionel Shriver 

Lionel Shriver (The Mandibles, So Much For That) returns to her usual insightful self with her new release Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

The story begins in 1991 when Kay and Cyril, in their early 50s, have returned from Kay’s father’s funeral. Having watched her father’s “four years of steady deterioration and ten years of nothing but degradation” to Alzheimer’s, they make a pact to die together when they are 80, partly to avoid the same decline themselves, but also out of a strong view to avoid being a drain on the public purse. Time marches on over the following 30 years, until the fateful day of March 29, 2020 approaches. But will they go through with it? What follows is a similar idea to her earlier book,

The Post-Birthday World, where two alternate timelines play out simultaneously. Here Shriver has concocted 12 different scenarios of how it could turn out - whether one or both go through with the suicide or not, and what might follow if they do not. Each cleverly picks up a different point in the original storyline and takes it somewhere else. Some are funny, some wryly sad, some are pleasantly utopian, some science fiction, and some a horrific dystopian version of institutionalised care. There’s even an amusing self-referential nod to Shriver herself as an author. As usual, Shriver has managed to contain something of humanity at its best, worst and most mundane throughout, with the usual searing social commentary on pretty much everything from healthcare, Brexit, Covid, economic policy, and of course ageing, death, and care for the elderly.

Shriver really is one of my favourite writers.