Ever notice how it seems that, pretty much no matter what a new technology is invented for, someone will discover other uses for it, and some of those uses may become as (or more) popular than the intended? That's sort of what happens here with "flatpacking".

At its core, A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life is the stories of two young women, struggling and persisting through two very different collections of oppressively unfair life circumstances, until multiple highly "off-label" uses of "flatpacking" pull their two lives and struggles into close contact, forever changing both in unexpected—and arguably "suitable" if not ideally happy—ways.

Plenty of other factors, including a decimating "worm" epidemic, very real (but not story-bludgeoning) elements of body dysmorphia and anorexia nervosa, multiple forms of family/parental neglect, and a hopeless addict with his weird "horseshoe" drug, all add dimension and drivers to different parts of the story, making for an interesting, colorful, depiction of believably real human problems struggling in a slightly weirded near-future world.

I agree with Zadie Smith's cited quotation that Robert McGill, in assembling this very creative and very human story, does indeed "know what he's doing".

One quibble: the tagline description "where people are treated like IKEA furniture" is much overstated. The story stands out well enough on its own without this misleading hyperbole.