Endling by Maria Reva
Maria Reva’s debut novel, ENDLING, is a mind-bending work of metafiction. Set in Ukraine in 2022, the novel took a sharp left turn into reality when Ukraine was invaded by Russia as Reva was writing the novel.
When the novel opens, Yeva, a loner and maverick scientist, is living out of her mobile lab scouring the country to breed rare snails. She meets sisters Nastia and Sol while working for the booming marriage industry in Ukraine. Posing as potential brides and their translator the three women are matched with Westeners coming to Ukraine on guided “romance tours” hoping to meet docile Ukranian brides untainted by feminism and modernity. None of the three women desire to marry – all have ulterior motives for their involvement. For Yeva it’s financial – she is able to fund her mobile lab with the money she earns. Sisters Nastia and Sol are hoping to find their mother – an ardent protestor who vanished after years of activism against the romance tours.
Nastia and Sol enlist Yeva and her bus to kidnap some of the Westeners, but their plans come to screeching halt as Russia invades. In a metafictional spiral, ENDLING becomes more than a satirical look at the marriage industry, when author Reva herself appears in the novel, sending the three angry women with their hapless load of men to Kherson to rescue her stranded grandfather.
As fiction and reality clash on the page, readers must wrestle with the realities of war: civilians stranded or killed by politically motivated aggression and the questions that follow. What does it mean to leave everything you know behind because of an invasion? What is it like to live under military occupation? How do you carry on any sense of normalcy when your world has been turned upside down? And what is it like for family members watching the horror from afar?
Maria Reva is a force; heer novel, ENDLING, is a must read in 2025. Listen to my interview on June 26 at 7pm and the 28th at 6am on Superior Reads, WTIP Radio, 90.7 Grand Marais. Posting under episodes on this page following.
