Library Journal
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David, a once-powerful corporate executive, travels on a private plane to London and Zurich, accompanied by an assistant. His thoughts drift trancelike from childhood memories to a game of solitaire on his phone to his plans for the next few days. The particulars of David's story and the purpose of his trip are revealed slowly, primarily through his interior monologue, but also through his circumstances and the behavior of others. The assistant's duties, for instance, begin to look more like those of a caretaker than a secretary. Cline (The Guest) beautifully depicts how a diagnosis changes David's perspective on his career. He muses that busyness dominated his life, for he was a "busy-ness man." Although the language is clear and direct, because so much of the narration is in David's head, readers are kept guessing and looking for clues. The experience of navigating the world with increasing memory lapses is portrayed in excruciating detail. The novel is startling and full of human insight. VERDICT This captivating illustration of an individual's response to a specific ailment raises universal questions about priorities, regrets, and human connection. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.—Jennifer Alexander

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Cline's third outing, after The Guest (2023), is told from the deteriorating mind of David Hastings. An elderly former finance executive suffering from Alzheimer's disease, he is on his way to Zurich to end his life on his terms. His only companion is a young man named Cody, who functions as his caretaker and assistant. Before David ends his life, he is going to pay a final visit to his grown daughter, Rebecca, in London, and try to see Tom, his high-school boarding-school roommate, in France. That David isn't especially close to either—he was a distant father and his relationship with Tom was complicated, to put it mildly—speaks to the greater truths about David's life that he's now grappling with. Tackling a subject as heavy as the end of a person's life as his grasp on himself and the world weakens is no small feat, but Cline handles it deftly, avoiding clichés and pat emotional catharses to explore both the weight and unburdening of a man's final days. This truly profound journey will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

Publishers Weekly
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“Disconcerting, this mental ice floe, populated only by David, floating off into the polar darkness,” writes Cline (The Guest) about the partially knowable 70-something protagonist of her starkly beautiful latest. David Hastings, a wealthy and once powerful businessman, is traveling by company jet through the night over Greenland, but his polar darkness is caused not only by geography but a neurodegenerative disease. He repeatedly loses track of his memories and surroundings, only to find himself drifting toward oblivion and hanging on to shards of insight about his condition (“The ice floe. The white room in the brain”). Soon, the reader gathers from such poetic fragments that David’s devoted assistant, Cody, has helped him arrange to die by euthanasia in Zurich. Before David’s appointment in Switzerland, the plane touches down in London, where David plans to meet his emotionally distant daughter. Next, he hopes to see his estranged boarding school friend, Tom, in France. There’s a bit too much pressure on the stakes of David’s desire to make amends with Tom, but this distraction is easy to forgive thanks to the brilliant prose exhibited on every page. Indeed, the novel’s lucidity is remarkable considering the dimming of David’s inner light, which Cline portrays with a laser focus and deep sympathy. It adds up to a striking meditation on mortality. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Sept.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A man with Alzheimer’s disease makes a final journey to Zurich to embrace his fate. To honor the gravity of his errand, David Hastings, a retired businessman in his 70s, long divorced and single, has been loaned his former boss’ private plane. He’s traveling in the company of a young man named Cody, his long-suffering assistant; although he sometimes suspects “the boy” is conning him and siphoning off his assets, readers are given plenty of leeway to form their own opinions. En route, David plays solitaire on his phone, occasionally pausing to consult a notebook full of notes in handwriting he doesn’t recognize. Tests have shown that he has amyloid plaques in his brain, the primary markers of Alzheimer’s. “Amyloid plaque, the doctor said so often, often enough that David started hearing it as Amy Lloyd plaque. I hate you, Amy Lloyd, he thought idly.” In her third novel, Cline departs her former territory of young women to fully inhabit the thoughts of a greatly diminished (and never very great anyway) man during the last few days of his life. These are reported in short paragraphs that oscillate between action in the present—a stop in London to visit his daughter, a road trip to the home of an estranged boyhood friend—and memories of the past. Elements of childhood, like the cowboy motif of his boyhood bedroom and the words of various mnemonics, songs, and prayers, are in sharper focus than adult experiences; his marriage and his career appear mainly as vague afterimages of disappointment and disgrace. The reading experience is hypnotic, eerie, and unsettling; the misheard words (pinot-barbiedoll for phenobarbital; assfart for Ausfahrt, the German word for highway exit) and misapprehended objects add a bitter sort of humor. It’s almost scary to think about what a convincing job Cline has done imagining this shattered form of consciousness, both near and far from what goes on in one’s supposedly healthy brain. Unexpected, beautifully controlled, and almost dangerously captivating. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.