Emma Cline, Switzy

 

- Emma Cline is a bestselling young American author of The Girls, Daddy, and The Guest. I haven't read any of them. On the front cover Mark Haddon calls her new book 'Sublime...completely gripping...a wonder'. Daisy Johnson calls it 'Her best book yet. Completely extraordinary'. 

- My opinion? It's easily one of the most tedious novels I’ve ever read. It's a deep penetration into a shallow man, and everything about it annoys the crap out of me. Her staccato prose reflects his consciousness and vacuity. She's a writer of talent but it's wasted on this annoying lightweight of a man. The silly title, the meaningless front cover, and the absence of an author photo, says it all. 

- David Hastings, now in his early seventies, is a former Chief Financial Officer on a flight to Zurich via London, and he reflects on his long corporate life: suits, coats, shoes, flights, hotels, dinners, a Rolodex, Christmas cards, secretaries. He works for his boss called Stearns. He's constantly playing Solitaire on his phone. He’s an empty soul with minimal intellectual energy, no interest in politics, world affairs, or today's wars. He has no deep love for his family or friends, apart from one school friend Tom. In other words he’s as boring as batshit. He’s off to Switzerland for euthanasia. 

- He doesn’t reflect on how much money he’ll leave his daughter, nor his house, furniture, belongings. Not even his Will. His wife Annabel and he divorced when their only child, Rebecca, was ten. 

- At least he recognises his current irrelevance: 'Now the young people had different brains…They had seen behind the curtain..’ He's also aware of 'The smell of old people. Their decaying skin. The addled brain'. He's been diagnosed with Amyloid plaque and has, as he tells it, 'odd fake medications, tests and treatments. For executives only'. His memory is virtually gone altogether. Only habitual things remain. He's ‘now learning that everything - oh, just everything - disintegrates’. 

 - By far the most interesting character in the novel is Cody, his assistant. Cody is in his mid-thirties and looks after him in every way. I guess he's well paid but we're never told. 

- An interesting dimension to the story is his reflections on his school days, and his friend Tom. They'd go to Tom’s house for school breaks. Tom was bright. And David was attracted to him, even physically. The school bullies attacked Tom on one occasion and David stood there and did nothing. They were distant from that point. 

- At the end of the novel he and Cody fly in a private noncommercial plane to Zurich.  

- In a comfortable room, with a nurse in attendance, he swallows the barbiturate. 

- As a bored reader I thought 'thank god!' You may wonder why I lasted until the end. It wasn't because I wondered whether he'd chose life over death. It was solely because of Emma Cline's entrancing prose.