The Easy Way Out

Shortlisted for the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Award

If you could help someone in pain, would you?

Evan is a nurse, a suicide assistant. His job is legal . . . just. He's the one at the hospital who hands out the last drink to those who ask for it.

Evan's friends don't know what he does during the day. His mother, Viv, doesn't know what he's up to at night. And his supervisor suspects there may be trouble ahead.

As he helps one patient after another die, Evan pushes against legality, his own morality and the best intentions of those closest to him, discovering that his own path will be neither quick nor painless.

He knows what he has to do.

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Steven Amsterdam challenges readers to face the most taboo and heartbreaking of dilemmas. Would you help someone end their life?

About the Author

Steven Amsterdam is the award-winning author of Things We Didn't See Coming (winner of the AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR, shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction and longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award) and What The Family Needed (AWW Great Read and longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC literary award). He lives in Melbourne with his partner where he works as a palliative care nurse.

Review by Caroline Baum

This is an intelligent, relevant and immensely thought-provoking, tackling the controversial topic of assisted dying head-on. If you want to read a serious novel that will make you question your position on the subject while being immensely engaging and entertaining, look no further. It’s got the topical bite that you’d expect from Lionel Shriver: like her, Amsterdam brings a lethally cool, rational, methodical attack to a taboo most would prefer not to tackle. In this case, the author is a palliative care nurse, so he really knows what he’s talking about.

His central character Evan is mysterious and intriguing: he grew up on a commune with his mum Viv, a gambler who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and is determined to maintain her independence. By day Evan is a suicide assistant on a hush-hush pilot project in a hospital. By night, he unwinds in a no-strings attached sexual arrangement with a male couple.

Amsterdam renders each death that Evan assists with subtlety and unsentimental respect for the process - each scenario is a little bit different, testing Evan with varied challenges. After a minor stumble in the hospital program, he goes freelance with an under-the-radar volunteer group, presenting him with more people who have decided to end it all, and organises everything right down to the scented candles, the soundtrack and who will discover their death once they are gone. Amidst a flurry of calls from end of life clients, Viv suddenly goes missing, and Evan is faced with questions about her own care and intentions.

The Easy Way Out is rich with irony, a brilliant, uncomfortable but hugely important novel that I predict will be up for many prizes and deserves to win something major. It makes a significant, eloquent and humane contribution to an urgent public debate.