Should We Stay or Should We Go
-
-
3.6 • 17 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A best fiction book of 2021 for The Times
‘Hilarious… Fiery phrases spit and crackle. Disgust expands and bursts into belly laughs… a very funny book’ Sunday Times
‘Thought-provoking, timely, and extremely funny’ Metro
‘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
‘Witty and thought-provoking’ Woman’s Weekly
‘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
‘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
‘Wickedly witty’ Spectator
‘Decidedly timely’ Scotsman
‘This sharp-elbowed satire is also a brusquely tender portrait of enduring love’ Washington Post
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
Determined to die with dignity, Kay and her husband Cyril – both healthy and vital medical professionals in their early fifties – make a pact: to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned eighty.
A lot can change in thirty years, however…
By turns hilarious and touching, playful and grave, Should We Stay or Should We Go portrays twelve parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril. Do they honour their agreement? And if not, will they live to regret it?
‘Some books become so popular that the lucky author can thereafter churn out any old cobblers, confident in the knowledge that it will be published and find an audience. Lionel Shriver never took that easy route’ Irish Independent
About the author
LIONEL SHRIVER’S novels include the National Book Award finalist So Much for That, the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World, and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian and the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Interesting premise for a short story or a magazine article
Author
American novelist and journalist who was born Margaret Ann Shriver in 1957. Spends most of her time in the UK now. First achieved notoriety with her 7th novel ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ (2003), but more notorious in recent years for railing against the US health care system, big Pharma, big finance, and wokeness in its many guises. She causes offence across the political spectrum, although more on the left than the right. The left are easier to offend, by and large. Her peer group, baby boomers, are frequent targets of satire in her novels.
Precis
Ms S’s ‘The Motion of the Body Through Space’ (2020) was a satire on fitness culture. Her target this time is euthanasia. Specifically, we meet a married couple (male GP, female nurse turned interior designer) in the their fifties struggling to care for the wife’s demented elderly father. She does most of the work, while he philosophises. (Usual story). They, by which I mean him mainly, agree to “off” themselves peacefully when she reaches the age of 80 (he’s a year older than her), which happens the day Brexit is supposed to finalise (31 Mar 2019 for those who don’t recall), which didn’t go as planned. Neither did the death pact. No matter. The author then gives us a series of alternative scenarios (I’ve forgotten how many), some of them far fetched (TW: cryonics). Hubby has strong opinions about Brexit, which gets plenty of attention too.
Writing
Ms S’s intellect and trenchant wit are on display, along with her prejudices. There’s a lot of repetition too, more than was necessary to crank out the range of different endings IMHO.
Bottom line
Interesting premise for a short story or a magazine article. Not enough there to fill a novel.