At times funny, at other times sad, and more than often a mixture of the two, Giving Up by Mike Steeves is a deeply felt account of what goes on in the inner sanctum of the modern couple's apartment. In grappling with the line between what happened and what might have happened, Steeves gives voice to the anguish of a generation of people who grew up with great expectations, and are now settling into their own personal failures and compromises: James is obsessed with completing his life's work. Mary is worried about their problems starting a family, and is scared that their future might not turn out as she'd planned. In the span of a few hours on an ordinary night in a non-descript city, two relatively small events will have enormous consequences on James' and Mary's lives, both together and apart. With an unrelenting prose style and pitch-black humour, Giving Up addresses difficult topics—James's ruinous ambition, and Mary's quiet anguish—in a funny and relatable way.