This wildly original novel begins with Yeva, a scientist in Ukraine, funding her research into endangered snails by working as a potential bride on romance tours: real-life pre-war events where Western men travelled to Ukraine in search of Eastern European brides, sold on the fantasy of women untouched by feminism. But Yeva’s real focus is on her endangered snails or, more specifically, the Endlings (a term for the last surviving members of a species).
Fun fact: the character Lefty is inspired by a real-life left-coiling snail and the worldwide search to find him a mate.
We also meet Nastia and Sol, sisters working the same bridal tours. When their feminist-activist mother disappears, one of them hatches a plan: kidnap 12 of the tour’s bachelors as a political statement, a cry for attention, and a hopeful attempt to bring their mother home. What follows is darkly funny, bitingly satirical, and completely unhinged in the best possible way.
But as Maria Reva is writing this novel, Russia invades Ukraine. And the book shifts. Fact begins to bleed into fiction. Reva, herself a Ukrainian immigrant living in Canada, brings the real grief, disorientation, and messiness of war into the narrative. She begins to question the role of art during times of real-world crisis. What good is fiction when real lives are being destroyed? What does it mean to be an immigrant when your home country is being invaded? And why does it take a country being bombed for the world to start paying attention?
What results is both a deeply personal and incredibly moving novel that shape-shifts constantly. Some chapters appear as letters, others as interviews. There are typographical surprises, narrative ruptures, and a deliberate unraveling of form. Yet, despite its inventiveness, it remains surprisingly accessible to the reader.
Reva uses wit and absurdity to ease us into the darkness, the humour acts like a hand on your back, guiding you gently through a story laced with trauma, upheaval, and love. It’s clear she’s grappling with her own questions around identity, exile, and belonging. And we, the readers, are brought along for this urgent, genre-defying, unforgettable ride. I loved every minute of it.
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