It’s the 1990s, and Kay arrives back at her London home from her 94-year-old father’s funeral dry-eyed but exhausted. Since Kay long ago mourned the vibrant man her father was before his slow decline into Alzheimer's disease, she has no tears for the violent, abusive man he had become. “This dying by degrees, it cheats everyone,” she complains to her erudite husband, Cyril. “My memory of what he once was is like a delicate daddy longlegs that the last ten years have stepped on.” Cyril, a physician with Britain’s National Health Service, is patient and understanding as they discuss their concerns over the future demise of Kay’s mother, and Cyril’s parents.

But it turns out that Cyril has been thinking about more than just their parents: “I’m much more worried about what will happen to us.” Although they’re in their early 50s, he suggests a plan for a definite and controlled exit from life. He proposes that they commit suicide --- together --- on her 80th birthday. He even has the Seconal stashed in a soap dish in the back of the fridge, since a seriously disabling medical event could inspire an even earlier exit. Their discussion is detailed and darkly humorous as they air the worries that plague us all as we contemplate our mortality.

"SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO may not help you decide [on the existential questions it raises], but its wild romp through serious issues could actually lighten your mood."

What if we outlive our money and end up warehoused in a sad and terrible group care home? What if we become a burden to our children? But if we do decide to end it all, what about the possibility that we could have lived many more fruitful and satisfying years? Is there a chance that a miracle fountain-of-youth drug will be invented? If we scrimp and save for an exceptional long-term care home, is that worth it? They cover all the bases they can think of and weigh the odds. After a few weeks of consideration, Kay agrees to the pact.

Fast forward to 2020. Each subsequent chapter restarts the premise and imagines an alternate ending, tweaking the planned suicide Kay and Cyril had envisioned and fleshing out a different ending. What if one of them goes through with it and the other doesn’t? What if they change their minds, after having spent all their money because they didn’t plan to need it? What if they end up in a “nice” care home, or a vile one? Enumerating all the storylines would spoil the fun --- and fun it is, in Lionel Shriver’s imaginative and caustic hands.

Here’s a description of their daughter, Haley: “Haley’s degree in performance art from Goldsmiths hadn’t, predictably, led to a lucrative career, but her youthful flamboyance had snagged her a husband with a solid professorship in linguistics at University College London safely before her mesmeric volatility slid to ordinary neurosis and self-involvement.”

How that sentence sits with you is a good predictor of whether or not you’ll like the book, because Shriver spares no sentiment on any of her characters, or even herself! At one point, while Cyril and Kay are debating if the COVID-19 lockdown is warranted, Kay says, “Please tell me you’re not listening to that Shriver woman. She’s hysteric. And so annoyingly smug, as if she wants civilization to collapse, just so she can be proved right.”

I would wager that most of us over the age of 50 or 60 are wrestling with these existential questions and what, if anything, we can or should do about them. SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO may not help you decide, but its wild romp through serious issues could actually lighten your mood.