Book Review of the Day: Endling

Deep breath.

Maria Reva’s @revawrites wonderful novel Endling is certainly different. Let me start with the title. In a recent appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Reva said that an endling is the last surviving member of a species. In this book, the species in question is a type of snail. And so the first part of the book is about Yeva, a snail researcher on a quest to find that snail in her native Ukraine. OK. That is sort of medium interesting.

And then we are introduced to Nastia and her sister Solomiya who work in the Ukrainian bridal industry. Yeva occasionally works in this industry as well because she finds it difficult to find funding for her research. To quote “My novel-in-progress, Endling, explores the problematic practices that beset the international bridal industry, simultaneously interrogating the hackneyed, albeit persistently prevalent, Western perception of Ukrainian women as either docile and acquiescent “mail-order brides” or wily and deceitful scammers” (p. 124). The three women put together a less than thought out kidnapping plot. (Elsewhere Reva says she was inspired by Deb Olin Unferth’s Barn 8 in which some people plot to kidnap thousands of chickens from an industrial farm.) Ok. More interesting.

With these two plots coming together, Reva, at about the the one third point throws in several experimental elements. For example, there are four consecutive different versions of chapter 44, each telling this part of the story differently. Or, another example, she has an acknowledgements, a fictitious note on the type, and correspondence between the author and the editor about the manuscript in progress. I see that Reva published an article about reading surreal stories in 2020. She wrote there, “In bending and expanding our minds, surrealist books can help us accept our own rapidly changing reality.” I think it is safe to say that Ukraine is today, a changing reality. Ok. To me, this is interesting.

I found this book very much worth my time. Recommended for people interested in the intersection of literary fiction, and experimental fiction.

kindle and libro.fm audiobook. 333 pgs. 7 June 2025