Endling by Maria Reva
Jan. 30’s news of a temporary ceasefire and the possible admittance of Ukraine into the European Union is a necessary reminder that the Russian War on Ukraine continues, despite significant domestic and international distractions. Maria Reva’s novel “Endling” takes us back to February 2022, when Russia first launched its full-scale invasion, juxtaposing a farcical tale of three angry women intent on making a point with a broader study of the impact of war on civilians and their families living overseas.
Don’t let the grim subject matter cloud the darkly comic, offbeat and surprising nature of this book. The narrative begins with Yeva, a scientist intent on mollusk conservation who funds her work by participating in “romance tours” that lure lonely Western men with the possibility of snagging beautiful, docile Ukrainian brides.
Yeva lives in her mobile lab, driving from location to location in search of the last survivors of various gastropod species hidden amongst the Ukrainian woodlands. Her sole purpose in life is “evacuating” and caring for 276 snails. Her favorite is Lefty, the last one of his species. When Lefty and his brethren need a new filtration system, or Yeva’s trailer needs gas, she signs up for another romance tour, slaps on some lipstick and girds herself for a round of dismal and demoralizing dates.
Anastasia, known as Nastia, is another Bride with her own reasons for joining the romance tours. Along with her sister Sol, who serves as an interpreter, Nastia’s participation is in part practical and in part pure spite. Their mother, Iolanta, is a warrior feminist who rails against the international wedding industry and would hate for her daughters to become mixed up in it. But when she abandons them without warning, the girls have limited options for keeping food on the table.
Nastia is not content to simply seduce unwitting dupes into gifting her expensive jewelry and lavish meals. She hatches a plan to lure a dozen bachelors to Yeva’s trailer on a pretense, then kidnap them for ransom and publicity, exposing the disgusting patriarchy and getting her mother’s attention. The women manage to get the men on board and make haste to the Belarus border. Then Russian bombs start dropping.
At this point, “Endling” abandons its linear narrative and jumps to the story of a struggling Canadian author (named Maria Reva), born in Ukraine, working on a novel about the “invasion of Western bachelors in Ukraine, and then an actual invasion happened.” There are email snippets, stream-of-consciousness ramblings, grant applications, book acknowledgements — even an author bio and “A Note on the Type” describing the book’s typeface — in a metafictional mashup that will delight certain readers and perplex others.
“Endling” then dips back and forth between Yeva’s story with the snails and hostages and the story-within-a-story (also with snails and hostages) and an examination of how the Ukrainian diaspora is reacting to the prolonged war and its impact on their families.
“Endling” was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, which is shorthand for “some people consider this to be ambitious, high-quality literary fiction while others will find it stylistically challenging and/or pretentious.” Whether all comers will enjoy its complexity depends on the readers’ comfort level and preference.
This makes for excellent fodder for book group discussion! Read, weep, laugh and sigh for Yeva (or for Lefty) and think about our Whatcom County Ukrainian and Russian neighbors and their ongoing trauma as the war drags on.
Christine Perkins is executive director of the Whatcom County Library System, wcls.org.
(Originally published in Cascadia Daily News, Thursday, February 5, 2026.)