ENDLING

What begins as a wacky picaresque involving snail conservation, a missing mother, and an RV full of kidnapped Western bachelors shatters into a metafictional reckoning with the war in Ukraine.

An endling is the last known member of a species before it becomes extinct, and Reva’s debut novel is both about one such creature—a charming left-coiling snail named Lefty—and meant to embody the term itself, as a glimpse of a lost world. Or, as the author’s agent asks her at one of the first autofictional asides in the narrative, “Wasn’t your novel originally going to be about a marriage agency in Ukraine?” Well, it probably was. And it was also going to be about snails. The three central characters are 18-year-old Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, who work for a Ukrainian “romance tour” outfit, and Yeva, a scientist dedicated to saving and preserving snail species in her mobile lab (a beat-up RV), though she also moonlights at the bridal agency when she needs cash. The three come together when the sisters devise a plot they hope will result in the return of their missing mother, a famous activist who plotted stunts meant to derail the agency and its industry. The plot involves kidnapping a dozen men from the latest group of wife-seekers and holding them in Yeva’s RV. This plan, and the novel containing it, are themselves derailed by the Russian invasion of 2022. This results in a hasty wrap-up of the narrative early in its second hundred pages, followed by back matter and what turns out to be a rather premature acknowledgments section. After a few blank pages, the novel resumes and continues on both fictional and metafictional trajectories, including grant applications in which Reva seeks support for continuing her work and a resumption of the main storyline in the midst of war. Her success at keeping that storyline alive, full of suspense and humor, while never letting go of what is really happening in the lives of Ukrainian people at home and abroad, is what earns this book comparisons to Percival Everett and George Saunders, though it is also entirely unique.

A noteworthy literary achievement and also a good story, sure to be widely discussed and enjoyed.