Emma Cline is best known as the author of novels about troubled young women. The Girls, her debut, inhabited a follower of a Charles Manson figure, who opted out of the murders at the last minute. Her second, The Guest, followed a callow beauty who’d attached herself to a wealthy man for accommodation.

Switzy, her third novel, longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, turns to a different kind of protagonist. The novel follows an elderly American man making a final journey to Switzerland. The way to Golgotha? A last hurrah? Readers can quickly guess Switzerland is the place where David Hastings, our narrator, plans to end his life before his accelerating Alzheimer’s disease robs him of total agency.

Rather than scrutinising the ethics of such a decision, Cline focuses on the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, how we construct our own version of events, and what happens when our ability to control that narrative begins to slip away.

Review: Switzy by Emma Cline (Chatto & Windus)

David is not an immediately sympathetic guide. He is often curt, entitled and rude, particularly towards his assistant, Cody (who is not altogether warm). What makes David compelling is his limited awareness of these shortcomings. Cline repeatedly depicts David recognising his own irritability even as he succumbs to it. His unpleasantness often arrives before he fully understands its source.

A wealthy retired businessman in his seventies, David leaves the United States accompanied by Cody and heads for Zurich, where an appointment at an assisted-dying clinic awaits him. Along the way, they detour through London to visit David’s daughter Rebecca and travel to France so David can reconnect with Tom, a boarding-school friend he has not seen for decades.

The novel unfolds through David’s consciousness, allowing readers to experience his cognitive decline from the inside. It is not only memories that disappear. Everyday competencies begin to collapse. Looking at the itinerary for his journey, David tries to recall even the most immediate details of his plans: “Well, go ahead, David. Give it a shot. His brain jumbled and stuttered and spit out – nothing.” Elsewhere, conversations stall and names vanish almost instantly.

We encounter a mind that can no longer reliably distinguish between past and present, memory and observation.

The stories we tell ourselves

The........

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