A (10:49)
Yes, yes, exactly. Okay. Well, I did indeed purchase my latest read, full price. I ordered it from bookshop.org and it is Endling by Maria Riva. And I just had to have it because of this cover. I loved the. I'm looking at it now. It's red, blue, and then there's like this black and tan, sort of, I don't know, ground. And it's striped. And I learned that it is striped because of the snail. So this book heavily involves this particular snail. Anyway, so this is one that I did purchase for. For full price. It was long listed for the Booker Prize, and the reason that I am reading it, or read it was because it was long listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, which I'm reading all of those this year. So this one is such an interesting book. Wow. It's set in Ukraine in 2022. You're following Yeva. Yeva is a loner, and she is this maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country's forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails. And her relatives, like, they understand, but they really are trying to get her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don't know is that Yeva already dates plenty of men because to fund her work with snails, she works for this company that entertains Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours, believing they'll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity. Okay, so that's your first character, is Yeva. It is a hard word to say, modernity. Then you're following two other characters, Nastya and Sol, who are also in the marriage industry. And they pose as a hopeful bride and translator. And they're sort of there to go on dates with men, but really what they're there to do is piss off their mom, because she is this radical feminist, does not believe in this industry. Industry. And she's ditched them. And so they. They're doing this because they see it as their mother's worst nightmare that her daughters are wrapped up in this industry. And they think if she. If they do this, that she'll come to find them. And so of course the three women meet up. They know each other and it's actually pretty funny how they come to be connected with each other. So they decide actually to again, they're trying to get their mom's attention and they link up with Eva and they're try to. And they kidnap bachelors. They end up kidnapping, I want to say like 11 or 12 bachelors in this mobile lab, which is a bad thing because, you know, you don't want to kidnap people. They lure them onto it with like, oh, this is like a secret date, like whatever, whatever. And then the worst thing happens, right? They're in this mobile lab when Russia invades Ukraine. And obviously this is very bad because they are now stuck with these men. They are stuck themselves. They can't get out and they don't know really what to do. And so part two of this book really takes a hard shift, understandably, because the author then inserts herself into the story and it becomes this work of more metafiction. So it chap. Part two says, I sit in my parents attic in a city that is not a suburb of Vancouver, blah, blah, blah. So it's literally her, the author, author talking about how she found out what was happening in her home country as she is writing this work of fiction. And so essentially the everything that the author is working on and the people slash characters in the book were working on suddenly begins to feel very trivial, understandably because she. The endling. The word endling means it's the last of a species. And so she's trying to save these snails and now her country is being invaded. So it's feels very much like she's sort of wasting her life. Like what do I care about a snail right now? That everything is. Is up in disarray. So you're in part two for about this much. Maybe we'll say 30, 40 pages. And then it does get back to the story. But it's experimental. I am not an experimental girl, typically. And so I'm glad we were actually doing this sort of as a pseudo buddy read with our patrons because some folks are trying to read through the Aspen words long list with me. And some of them bowed out, understandably, like this is not for me. I don't like metafiction. But others were like, okay, here's what I thought. Da da da da da. So I will say I think this is a book that is not easy. It's not one that I was delighted to pick up. I did enjoy it though. So let me just Say that, but it felt heavy. It is heavy. It's a heavy topic. I also was reading this on literal Christmas Day, so I'm like, let me put this aside and. And find something that's a little lighter. The ending is solid. You know, we do get a resolution. But I would say after part two, it does become a little meta because the author does insert herself a bit into the story. I think it's very creative. I'm glad that I read it. I feel like that I shed light on a lot of things that I just did not know about this particular industry, about Ukraine, and just, you know, about the history in general. I liked the characters. I was rooting for them. I found it easy to sink into, especially in the beginning. Like, I was enjoying it. I was kind of having a good time. I'm like, how are they going to get out of this mess? And then I'm like, oh, gosh, you know, things get tough. You also get introduced to one of the bachelors that I had a particular affinity. Affinity toward. I wanted good things for him as well. Overall, this is a light recommendation. If you want to read something that's literary that will make you. You work a little bit, that'll make you think, but also does entertain, I'd recommend this. I also switched to the audio toward the end, and Saskia Marleveld, who's one of my favorite audiobook narrators, does narrate. So if you're having a hard time with this, try the audio or do a tandem read. And I think that could work for you because Saskia is a great narrator. All in all, it is a recommendation, and this book is Endling by Maria Reba.
