"Switzy" | Reviewed by Chris Stuckenschneider

“Switzy,” by Emma Cline, is among the 13 books nominated for the Booker Prize, a prestigious award presented annually to an author from the United Kingdom or Ireland. “Switzy” is on the long list, which will be pared down to six titles this week. Hopefully the novel will make it through the initial cut. It’s an immersive character study that’s thought-provoking and soul searching.

The book’s title was initially confusing. “Switzy” refers to Switzerland, the country where David Hastings, the main character will end his life in assisted suicide. David has Alzheimer’s and existing has become a confusing scenario of thoughts that swirl, the past colliding with the present in a nonsensical disarray. David had once been a well-heeled powerful businessman with a wife and daughter.

David’s marriage to Annabel ended in a divorce years before. Now in his 70s, David can no longer cope. He’s made mistakes along the way, and as the story unfolds readers sense he cared for his wife as much as he could. He also misses his adult daughter whom he doesn’t see because she lives in London. David had failings. He didn’t invest time or energy into maintaining relationships, never got intimate enough to bare his soul to anyone, other than to his childhood friend, Tom.

Accompanying David on his death trip is his companion Cody, a 34-year-old that David is paying mightily. Though Cody has been associated with David for years, at times David doesn’t trust him and others he comes into contact with.

David narrates the novel, and readers are left to make their own judgements and fill in the blanks knowing he has anxiety and paranoia, his sentences often incomplete and disjointed. That’s what makes the story so powerful. We walk in David’s shoes when he visits Tom in Switzerland, and understand why Tom isn’t happy to see him or accept his apology for a horrific discretion. We also feel the terror David experiences when he gets lost at night in Zurich, just hours before he’ll ingest the concoction that will kill him.

“Switzy” is a disquieting, brilliant book that keeps us in suspense until the last page, wondering if David will carry on, or will decide at the last minute to curtail his plan. As he journeys toward his final destination we get to know David intimately, to understand his internal conflicts, his regrets, and also celebrate the ordinary things in daily life that he suddenly notices.

There are lessons for us in “Switzy.” Though they might feel uncomfortable they make us sit up and take notice, and feel empathy for a man facing his demise, no matter his mistakes and regrets.

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