The Collections

Patricia Donovan

Mary Egan Publishing

Otago Daily Times, October 8th 2022

Most of us deal with the fear of death by considering it in the abstract, as something that will happen to us one day but nothing to worry about here and now. But what would it be like to live with the knowledge of exactly when that day will arrive?

The Collections by Christchurch-born Patricia Donovan is set in a near-future where, in the face of uncontrollable climate change and a global population pushing 10 billion, people are required to sacrifice themselves for the planet after their biblical threescore years and ten. Claris Millar is one of many who accepts the law with equanimity, recognising that “humanity needed a rescue remedy and fast, and if there was an alternative … no one had yet come up with it”. She even works at a crematorium where state-mandated euthanasia – Collection – is carried out. But after watching her husband calmly driven off to his death, Claris realises that she is not ready to follow him and starts planning her escape.

The story is presented as memoir, a technique that distances the reader slightly from the action – even at times of danger the tension is mitigated by the knowledge that Claris survives to complete this account – and allows her to explore her own ambivalence. The details of the Collection process are horrifying: ‘clients’ are sedated, euthanised with a similar cocktail of drugs as that used to execute prisoners, mulched in an industrial blender, and ‘gifted’ to a seedling tree. Despite this, Claris’s practical, matter-of-fact description perfectly illustrates how we, as a society, find ways to accommodate all manner of unpleasant truths. She does not deny her complicity, nor does she condemn the practice per se, but comes to recognise the ethical arguments in favour of euthanasia – the right to choose the time and manner of one’s own death – also constrain it. It is an important message but one that is delivered with dark humour and an acknowledgement of moral complexity. Claris is a perfect example of why we should never underestimate the older generation.  

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/confronting-knowledge-certain-death