Shriver tackles the next decades until their “use-by” date with her usual aplomb, offering 12 alternate scenarios. 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. There is no satire or irony in Cyril’s Swiftean “modest proposal,” as Shriver terms it. 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). 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.
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