Should We Stay or Should We Go
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3.9 • 24 Ratings
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- £5.99
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
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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.
