The term “endling” means the last surviving member of a species or subspecies. Once an endling dies, that species is officially considered extinct.
Maria Reva’s new novel, Endling, is about one such creature — a hibernating snail named Lefty – and a Ukrainian woman named Yeva who wants to preserve him as long as possible and potentially even find him a mate.
That’s the way the novel begins, anyway. But this strange story of one malacologist (that’s what you call a scientist who studies snails and other mollusks) morphs into a much more far-reaching and experimental tale that involves the Ukrainian marriage industry, an activist mother who goes into hiding, and an RV full of kidnapped bachelors.
Endling goes way beyond expansive, though, and ventures headlong into metafictional. And that’s where the magic really happens.
As Yeva and two other women navigate their camper full of Western men across the Ukrainian countryside, Russian forces invade Ukraine. Everything comes to a screeching halt, including the novel itself. The author, who was born in Ukraine and raised in Vancouver, recently explained to KMUW’s Beth Golay that the initial premise of her novel took a major turn because of real-life events. Reva ends up weaving fiction and fact, novel and novelist, and the fourth wall collapses among the ruins.
It’s not exaggerating to say Endling is a literary masterpiece, and wholly unique. It offers a stark reminder of the power of fiction and the fragility of life.
