Endling: A Novel
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • WINNER OF THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE • WINNER OF THE ATWOOD GIBSON WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CLIMATE FICTION PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDS
Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail. This darkly comic novel explores survival, love, and hope in times of encroaching darkness.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, THE GUARDIAN, LIBRARY JOURNAL
“Startling and ambitious.”—New York Times • “Virtuosic.”—NPR, Fresh Air • “Brilliant and heart-stopping.”—Los Angeles Times
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab.She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity.
Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.
Together they embark across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from over-seas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?
Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.
Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail. This darkly comic novel explores survival, love, and hope in times of encroaching darkness.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, THE GUARDIAN, LIBRARY JOURNAL
“Startling and ambitious.”—New York Times • “Virtuosic.”—NPR, Fresh Air • “Brilliant and heart-stopping.”—Los Angeles Times
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab.She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity.
Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.
Together they embark across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from over-seas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?
Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.
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Community Reviews
The main plot of the book did interest me and make me crave more but all the breaks and jumping chapters of the author to further describe the writing process of the book, the publisher feedback, and the actual real life struggle of the Ukrainian war distracted and made it hard to focus. It is a good book to show the life of a native and immigrant Ukrainian and the effects felt across the world of the injustice and attack on their country but the flow of the plot between fiction and nonfiction felt a but forced shame and guilt on the reader. I enjoyed both the fictional and biographical portions of the book, it just should have been two separate books or perhaps edited to integrated in a smoother manner instead of shuffled in.
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