Robert McGill

A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life is a darkly seriocomic take on the pandemic, suicide, body dysmorphia, immigration, the meaning of family, relationships, parenting, and more. Canadian eighteen year old, highly discouraged, injured distance runner Regan plans her suicide-by-flatpack, in which a person infected with “the worm” is compressed into a plastic wrapped tube and shipped to a buyer seeking companionship. Officially discontinued after off-gassing began killing recipients and inflated flat-packers alike, the flat-pack dark web supplies Regan with, first, Ülle, then Jari, then a baby. Defying convention, Ülle regains memories of her life before being flat-packed, and Regan doesn’t die from off-gassing. The black marketeers and the flat-packers’ family matriarch opt to kill her themselves.

The tight narrative comments broadly on the mishandling of the COVID pandemic and on migration, as infected people are relocated to another country to which they arrive pre-assimilated, without memories or history. Societal themes of family and success are framed by Regan’s relationship with her absent parents, her curtailed running career and related eating disorder, and her desire for human connection which ultimately overrules her desire to end it all.

Robert McGill has written a gruesomely witty story of one person’s experience, with wide-ranging implications for the rest of us.… (más)

It's hard to describe the inventive plot line without giving too much away - although I will say that the tagline of the book being, "A bold and absurd new take on the dystopian plague novel, where people are treated like IKEA furniture" did very little to prepare me for the actual focus of the book. The text alternates chapters between telling the "modern day" story and letters to a "young one" filling in past context. Both threads converge towards the end of the book, tying all the various characters together in a way I didn't expect. It's a dark book, but told in a way that makes the darkness as just a reality and part of life. It touches on suicide, eating disorders, loneliness, global pandemics, black market gangsters, and family relationships. The alternating chapters kept me, at first, from really getting into the book, but it's well-written with engaging characters, and despite the darkness, the unfolding plot kept me going and enjoying it (so to speak).… (más)

Regan decides to commit suicide due to many problems and a plague, she orders a “flatpack” which is a blow up of a once upon a time human, to make her end “comfortable.” Once she opens the box, which the flatpack is distributed in, this novel take off and does not stop or disappoint.

I loved this book and hated for it to end. I would like to say how in awe I am of Robert Gill’s story telling - just wonderful.

Thank you LibraryThing for the opportunity to read this wonderful book… (más)