Each month on euradio, in Turning The Page, our team will be interviewing people from the book world.
In this first programme, Christine Evain and Spencer Hawkridge explore Lionel Shriver's Should We Stay or Should We Go (2021), a darkly satirical novel that confronts ageing, illness and the ethics of end-of-life decisions against the unsettling backdrop of the COVID-19 era.
Through the story of Kay and Cyril Wilkinson, an NHS nurse and a physician who make a suicide pact after witnessing the prolonged decline of a parent, the discussion moves beyond the intimate to the political, as the title's question resonates not only with mortality but also with Brexit.
With their opposing views on the UK's departure from the European Union, the couple becomes a microcosm for national division, allowing the hosts to examine how Shriver intertwines personal choice, social responsibility and ideological conflict in a narrative that is by turns provocative, unsettling and sharply observant.
