Endling
About the book
Author: Maria Reva
Publisher: Doubleday
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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My review
I run a book club that reads the Booker Prize nominees one month at a time. By the time we read Endling, all I really knew about it was that there were snails. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a surprisingly funny yet deeply moving work of metafiction about the Russian invasion of Ukraine!
The story is about a woman named Yeva who is on a mission to save endangered snail species with the endlings (which is the word for the last surviving members of a species) she rescued and keeps in her mobile lab. There is also a young woman named Nastia who is on a mission to bring down the "romance tours" industry in Ukraine from the inside, in the wake of her activist mother's disappearance. Nastia concocts a plan to kidnap "bachelors." Yeva has a fully equipped trailer, and the rest is history. But actually, because Russia invades Ukraine. Without spoilers, I will just say that it becomes, as I said, metafictional and deeply moving.
Reva's ability to write a book that has such levity for such a heavy topic is deeply impressive. She asks us, how small of a life is worth saving? For how small of a life are we willing to hang on to hope in the face of despair?
Come for the asexual snail girl. Stay for the call to arms on a hope for a future where all lives are valued.
Content and trigger warnings
War
Violence, death
Suicidal thoughts/plans
Trafficking
Kidnapping
