‘The Easy Way Out’ by Steven Amsterdam

Evan is a nurse in an unnamed Australian city who works for a pilot assisted dying scheme under the new Measure 961. Initially nervous, Evan increasingly enjoys the ambiguous privilege of helping people and witnessing their deaths. However, after documentation footage shows him complying with a weak patient’s request to help drink the drug Nembutal, Evan is sacked - albeit without disciplinary proceedings as his boss Nettie doesn’t want to jeopardise the scheme. Evan is then headhunted by the Jaspers, a group offering illegal support to people who have sourced Nembutal themselves. He begins working for them despite being shaken by the questionable deaths involved. Meanwhile, Evan’s energetic and self-assured mum, Viv, has moved into a care home after becoming frail. When Viv is reinvigorated by a novel brain implant, she reengages with the world: she can walk again, as well as play poker and argue playfully. She discharges herself from the home and runs away, but Evan later finds her struggling after the initial effect of the implant wears off. Reconciled, they return home and she shows him the Nembutal she has bought for when she no longer wants to live. A few days later, Viv has a major stroke and, unable to speak or walk, is readmitted to the same care home she escaped from. The chief nurse gives Evan the go-ahead, off the record, to administer Viv’s Nembutal according to her previous wishes, but after realising that she still enjoys his company Evan gives her a protein drink instead.

Perhaps uniquely, this is a fiction title from a mainstream publisher directly addressing assisted dying and written by a palliative care professional - Amsterdam is a palliative nurse in Melbourne. It is also unusual for taking a comic satirical approach to this subject matter: the book is an unsettling, though potentially true-to-life, mix of droll banter and touching pathos. Graphic descriptions of assisted deaths are counterbalanced with humour as well as sex scenes between Evan and his partners Simon and Lon (who works at Viv’s care home). ‘The Easy Way Out’ was published in 2016 after the first major iteration of the Restoring Territory Rights Act, which aimed to repeal federal anti-euthanasia laws preventing Australia’s Northern Territory and ACT from legalising assisted dying, was defeated in the Australian Senate. Several Australian states subsequently began the process of legalisation from 2017 onwards and a second version of the territories act was passed in 2022. Although it hasn’t been cited in parliamentary and legal debates, ‘The Easy Way Out’ nevertheless carefully considers a range of ambiguities surrounding the possible legalisation of assisted dying, in particular, many of the prosaic ramifications of implementing an assisted dying scheme such as family reactions to people choosing to work in the field or the ambiguities of needing, and perhaps forcing, a clear verbal declaration of consent. Amsterdam’s own conflicted view, made clear in the Acknowledgements, is evident throughout. While the fictional Measure 961 requires the person to take the fatal dose themselves, some states in Australia have now made it legal for medical professionals to administer the dose instead in certain circumstances. The book was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2017 and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal 2017.