Endling

In Reva's astonishing metafictional tale (after Good Citizens Need Not Fear), a Ukrainian Canadian writer named Maria Reva attempts to write a novel about Ukraine’s mail-order bride industry on the eve of the Russian invasion. The novel’s first part consists of Reva’s novel in progress featuring Yeva, a snail conservationist working to save a species on the brink of extinction by traveling around the country in her RV turned lab to find specimens for breeding. To pay for her equipment, she joins guided romance tours and goes on dates with Western men looking for a pliable Ukrainian bride. Meanwhile, sisters Nastia and Sol strive to take the bridal industry down. After Nastia borrows Yeva’s RV with a plan to kidnap 12 of the bachelors, Russia invades and Reva’s manuscript grinds to a halt. Reva emerges as a character in the second part, reeling from the bombings and worrying about her grandfather, who still resides in occupied Kherson, as she watches the news from Vancouver. She disappoints her agent with the news that she’s quit the novel (“I was writing about a so-called invasion of Western bachelors to Ukraine, and then an actual invasion happened.... To continue now seems unforgivable”). Reva then writes a grant proposal to travel in Ukraine for research on a “postnovel” about her birth country in flux. When she returns in the final section to her three revolutionary anti-brides, their adventure brilliantly dovetails with Reva’s literary experiment and wartime reckoning. This inspired and urgent novel is bound to make a major splash. (June)