Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver

In several versions, Hayley bursts into the house after receiving Kay’s text, usually followed by an emergency medical team. Shriver deals Kay and Cyril a series of hands to play out, introducing new variables each time but maintaining the rules of the game set by their personalities and the state of the world around them. In Chapter 2, “The First Last Supper,” she slips off to the bathroom during their supposed final meal and impulsively sends a text message: “Cyril had claimed that they were making a ‘calculated gamble,’ and in the spirit of a poker game Kay was introducing a wild card.” She compensates by obsessively planning their memorial service and making a month’s worth of farewell dates with friends and family, all canceled as the covid-19 pandemic arrives just a few weeks before Kay’s landmark birthday. But Kay (who covertly votes Leave) grows increasingly panicky.

After retirement, they draw on their house’s equity to take a series of exotic vacations thoroughly enjoyed by Kay and tolerated by Cyril, who finds old age “less than enchanting.” The referendum on Brexit, which he adamantly opposes, hardens his resolve to leave this unsatisfactory world. Shriver quickly sketches the couple’s trajectory across three decades before the appointed day in 2020, planting plot seeds that will flower in multiple ways. Suicide is Cyril’s idea, which will prove significant later, but Kay agrees, and she’s no pushover - which will also prove significant.

They don’t seem especially attached to their three children: self-dramatizing Hayley, self-serving Roy and dutiful Simon. They both work for the National Health Service - she’s a nurse, he’s a GP - so they see every day the consequences of lives extended beyond people’s ability to care for themselves. Kay is 51, Cyril 52 he’s an idealistic socialist, she’s more pragmatic and conservative. They’ve just returned from the funeral of her father, whose 14-year mental and physical deterioration has been so exhausting, says Kay, “he used up even the miserable amount of energy we’d need to celebrate the fact that he’s dead at last.” Readers of Shriver’s previous work will recognize the bluntly unsentimental attitude, and the smooth way she inserts essential details into the couple’s post-funeral conversation.

Kay and Cyril Wilkinson make their pact in October 1991 at their home in Lambeth, South London.

Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver