Lionel Shriver: ‘A chosen death is an authorial act – I’ve never cared for stories that end on ellipses’

The author's new novel centres around an elderly couple bound in a suicide pact. Watching her parents age, the subject of dying with dignity is never far from her mind

For those of us with elderly parents, countless news broadcasts of bewildered residents cruelly exiled in care homes during this pandemic have been especially raw. Even so, I can't be the only one who's thought reflexively: That will never be me."

My friend Jolanta in Brooklyn has made that vow official. Put through quite the medical ringer herself, she tended to a difficult mother through a drawn-out decline. Not long ago, she declared to me fiercely that she'd no interest in living beyond the age of 80. Dead smart and not given to whimsy, Jolanta was already about 60, the very point at which old age starts to seem like something that might actually happen. I couldn't help but wonder, should she indeed turn 80, will she take matters into her own hands - or not?