Yes, it’s quite mad, said Alex Preston in the FT. As alternate universe follows alternate universe, “it all goes on a bit”. In another, they freeze their bodies, and awake far in the future, “when people have grown feathers for some reason”. In one of these scenarios, the couple decide against killing themselves, and their “callous, awful children commit them to a ghastly old-age facility”, said Walter Kirn in The New York Times. The novel then skips to the appointed day, at which point it reveals itself as a speculative work, serving up “12 alternative scenarios” for what might happen next. Convinced society is wrongly extending old people’s lives, Cyril persuades Kay to join him in a pact to commit suicide on her 80th birthday. Kay and Cyril are a married couple (a nurse and a doctor) whom we first meet in their 50s. Book of the week: The Case of the Married Woman. Novel of the week: The Answer to Everything.
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