There are so many things to say about Endling by Maria Reva that help show that it's different from almost anything I've ever read before—even though there have been comparisons made between Maria Reva and George Saunders and Maria Reva and Percival Everett —and their writing in the absurdist literary tradition.
Maybe a little bit of a set-up would help. There’s a snail biologist, Yeva, in Ukraine who tries to save the country’s snail species from the brink of extinction. This is where the book’s title comes from. An “endling” is the last individual of a species or subspecies.
Yeva funds her conservation work by dating Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours. The idea is that there are docile brides untainted by feminism or modernity in this part of the world. This is a generalization that can be easily refuted. But the characters of Nastia and Solomiya take good advantage of this stereotype as they embark on a plan to find their mother—a woman who protested the so-called bride tours.
And then Russia invades Ukraine.
Maria Reva could not go on writing this novel without real life coming into the pages of her work. Maria Reva—in first person—takes over the narrative to address what she experienced and what her loved ones experienced in this war-torn part of the world.
We reach another part of the novel that leads somehow back to Yeva and her concerns.
The stories merge and mingle. It all makes perfect sense somehow. We learn of the ways that a species can die off and consider the death and destruction of war—and how to survive and make meaning of it all.
Guest: Maria Reva, author of Endling.
