Thank you to netgalley for an egalley in exchange for a review. This is the story, or multiple stories of Kay and Cyril Wilkinson. After dealing with Kay's father's Alzheimer's, they decided to kill themselves on Kay's 80th birthday. This is when the story really takes off. Different decisions lead to different outcomes. This was like reading hypothetical game theory come to life, Decisions taken by one person, lead to decisions taken by multiple people and so on. The book got a little politically heavy handed at times, but it was definitely a fun read.

I work in a high school, so this book isn't necessarily in their wheelhouse. However, nobody writes about neurotic people and minutiae better than Lionel Shriver. Even though there wasn't much STORY here, I enjoyed the characters (even though I think I'm not supposed to like them) and their conversations.

The concept of this book was very cool: alternate universes revolving around a couple (Cyril and Kay)'s decision whether or not to kill themselves on Kay's 80th birthday to spare themselves (and the NHS coffers) the indignities of aging. This reminded me a bit of Shriver's earlier book, The Post-Birthday World, but with many (too many) more alternative outcomes.

Shriver is as snarky and witty as ever, but this book fell flat for me overall. Some of the alternates were just too kooky -- cryogenics and anti-aging pills -- ugh -- and I get that the stay/leave of Brexit was a theme, but omg it was boring to read about it in detail, especially through the voice of Cyril who was such a bombastic know-it-all, and I did not love his Covid denier underpinnings either.

This would be an interesting story to discuss with a book group, assuming everyone could make it through the entire book. I ended up skimming in parts because I just wanted it to be over.

I love Shriver's book I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE. I was hoping that I would love this book also. Sadly I did not and did not even finish it. I am not into science fiction so I did not enjoy this book.

Surprisingly oriented to science fiction hard to categorize.not whay I expected from reading the earlier books