Jaw-dropping formal invention turns this witty heist tale of endangered snails and ‘mail-order’ brides into an urgent dispatch about writing during conflict
Maria Reva’s dexterous and formally inventive debut novel is impossible to review without giving away a major surprise. I do this with a heavy heart: one of the pleasures of this book is the jaw‑dropping coup de théâtre that comes halfway through. Until that point, Endling offers its readers the pleasures of a more or less conventional novel.
The central character is a misanthropic obsessive called Yeva who drives a converted campervan around the countryside of her native Ukraine, rescuing endangered snails. She’s hoping to get them to breed, but some turn out to be endlings – the last living member of a species. First coined in the 1990s, the word was unknown to me before I read this book, but the tragic biological checkmate it describes is older than history. Aurochs, dodos, quaggas, mammoths and Tasmanian tigers must all have culminated in an endling.
Snails weren’t pandas – those oversize bumbling toddlers that sucked up national conservation budgets – or any of the other charismatic megafauna, like orcas or gorillas. Snails weren’t huggy koala bears, which in reality were vicious and riddled with chlamydia. Nor were snails otters, which looked like plush toys made for mascots by aquariums, despite the fact that they lured dogs from beaches to drown and rape them.
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