It feels as though every other British novel these days begins with someone leaving Britain. All That Man Is by David Szalay commences when two young interrailers pull into Berlin Hauptbahnhof; Rachel Cusk’s Outline opens with a flight to Greece; Ali Smith’s Autumn features its protagonist, Elisabeth, painfully attempting to renew her passport, a totem of identity that has the dual function of allowing her to flee a bitter and conflicted homeland before it collapses into full-blown civil war.
Let Go My Hand, the fourth novel by the journalist and critic Edward Docx, begins at Dover ferry port as a father and son, Laurence and Louis, set off in the direction of Switzerland (like the UK, you might say), where Laurence has an appointment at Dignitas and intends to end his life (like the UK, you might say). But rather than a choice between liberal Europhilia and a “weatherproof expression of hurt righteousness” (to quote A A Gill), it is history that separates these two men.
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