Monday, Dec. 8, 2025--San Antonio
Endling by Maria Reva was longlisted for the Booker Prize and has been named a top book of 2025 by several prominent publications. Most of the story is fascinating. It takes place in Ukraine just before the latest Russian invasion and during the invasion while centering on various characters--a woman so obsessed with saving snails (when the last existing member of any species on earth dies it is called an "endling") that she maintains a mobile lab in a small van to try to save the last few survivors of several species of snails in hopes of regenerating their population and when the endling dies, she freezes it in a jar hoping that science will advance enough to use that specimen to reintroduce the species; two sisters whose mother, a protester very well known throughout Ukraine who is against the marriage businesses bringing men from the western world to find Ukrainian wives who disappeared almost a year ago with no trace or contact since; and a group of bachelors who have arrived from North American and England for a week of speed dating with hope of attaining the goal of the trip: "May You Find the One!" I had two problems with the novel. The very beginning spent way too much time providing the details of the decreasing populations of snails in the world and the process the Ukrainian woman (and a man in Hawaii with the same goal there) goes through trying to save them, the way that snails reproduce, etc. And in the middle of the novel, there is a strange "insert" where the main story stops and the the author writes about the problems she is having writing the story and how she needs to change the direction of it. Maybe that insert is what has brought acclaim for the book, but for me it wasn't needed; the main story told alone and with a shortened beginning would have been perfect. I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5. It would have been a whole point higher without the problems that lowered my rating.
