{"product_id":"endling","title":"Endling","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(197, 132, 251);\"\u003eThe Grey Area review \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(197, 132, 251);\"\u003e-experimental metafiction form, great concept and asexual main character\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(197, 132, 251);\"\u003e-CWs: \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003eWar, Death, Violence, acephobia \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn the absurdist literary tradition of George Saunders and Percival Everett comes a brilliant debut about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country’s snail species from the brink of extinction.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUkraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to give up, settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSo begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBut their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eEndling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from overseas: can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eEndling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a tour de force from an author on the cutting edge of fiction,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eweaving a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Maria Reva","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54064297738581,"sku":null,"price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0870\/0847\/7525\/files\/IMG_0654.heic?v=1780777893","url":"https:\/\/greyareabooks.com\/products\/endling","provider":"The Grey Area","version":"1.0","type":"link"}