In The Last Exit (Crooked Lane, Jan.), Kaufman imagines a future in which the elderly are pressured to choose euthanasia from a deadly disease.
Was this book in the works pre-Covid?
I finished writing in the fall of 2019, but now I’m worried that some readers might think I’m scrambling for a “ripped from the headlines” marketing hook. It’s set in 2033, and my protagonist, police detective Jen Lu, is wearing an N95 mask because of smoke wafting all the way to Washington, D.C., from the Great Shenandoah Fire—and I was worried that most readers wouldn’t have a clue what an N95 was, let alone believe that smoke from forest fires could choke a major city. Meanwhile, there’s a virus killing off large numbers of middle-aged people. Part of the backstory is a mass uprising in D.C. in the mid-2020s against police brutality. I swear on a stack of Bibles all this was written in 2018 and 2019.
Any thoughts how Covid might have altered what you wrote?
The powers-that-be in 2033 respond to the virus with breathtaking cynicism: we’ll give you a preventative treatment if your parents, when they reach 65, voluntarily “exit.” This policy, and opposition to it, is key to my plot. But in my most feverish moments, I couldn’t have imagined anyone saying that the virus was a hoax. Writers can claim only so much in the way of imagination.
Did dystopian sci-fi like Soylent Green influence you?
My one goal was not to have a grim dystopian future. There’s no neon reflecting in endless puddles in crowded urban cityscapes, no nuclear destruction, irreversible climate change, or wall-to-wall surveillance. Too many dystopian thrillers perpetuate the absurdity of the lone hero who single-handedly takes down the status quo. The Last Exit indeed has a hero who risks everything, but ultimately, it’s about our collective capacity to change the world for the better. It’s a book of hope.
What made you recast elder abuse as elder parents abusing their children by refusing to exit?
That, of course, is a nod to Orwell and doublespeak, but also a reaction to the use of language by those today who want to distort, dissemble, and deny reality. “Fake news” by the greatest peddlers of lies. “Conservative” by those who want to destroy rather than conserve our natural heritage. “Freedom” by those who greedily and selfishly do whatever the hell they want regardless of the harm it will cause others. Have I been spending too much time watching the news?
