The end is nigh: Switzy, by Emma Cline, reviewed
Emma Cline’s first novel, The Girls (2016), sold more hardback copies than any other debut novel published in the UK that year. It was an atmospheric treat of a book about young women in a Mansonesqe cult. Her next novel, The Guest (2023), was a haunting story about a beautiful, brittle grifter trying her luck in the Hamptons and coming unstuck. In between came Daddy (2020), a collection of short stories united by their exploration of toxic masculinity. This latest novel, Switzy, which won her her first Booker Prize longlisting, is quite a departure, in that it is about a man with dementia contemplating the end of his life. Cline is attempting something even more difficult here than producing an interesting story about a boring man in the style of, say, John Cheever.
