This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear T. Caragas and Boyle read his story

the end is only a beginning from the August 21st, 2023 issue of the magazine.

Boyle has published more than two dozen books of fiction, including the story collection

I walk between the raindrops and the novel blue skies which came out earlier this year.

Now here's T. Caragas and Boyle.

The end is only a beginning.

His wife wanted to go with him, but her mother was still dying, really taking her time with it

as if it were something to savor. And maybe it was. You look at these hopeless cases,

the blinding pain, the loss of volition, and dignity, and even personhood.

And wondered why they just didn't kill themselves, but then you wouldn't know till you got there, would you?

For his part, he was determined to go by his own hand, and when he was depressed,

which had to be at least 80% of the time, he dwelled on the details of how he was going to do it.

Car, garage, exhaust, mentally composing his obituary as if it were a story he was writing.

A physician friend of his had told him that if you were terminally ill,

you could legally end your suffering by depressing a plunger on the IV tube that would flood your veins

with benzodiazepines and morphine, but the rub was, you had to have the ability to use your hand,

your thumb, your brain. In any case, he was going to Paris and Carolin wasn't.

Air France, first-class cabin, the boredom ameliorated by champagne and cognac and the

inflite cuisine, which only the French Germans and Dutch seemed to care about.

Though he wasn't particularly hungry, not after three glasses of tatinger, so he sat back and

...