Novels No. 83

 

Maria Reva. Endling. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2025.

Yeva participates in Ukraine “romance tours” that attract thousands of men seeking the cliché of a docile, compliant bride. Men from many countries pay plenty to socialize and party with a bevy of candidates—girls who want a new life far away. But Yeva is a scientist; her only interest is maintaining her mobile laboratory for rescuing endangered snails—the endlings of their species; she has no intention of marrying, but expensive gifts can be turned into the cash she needs. When Yeva reaches a point of despair—bacteria decimates all but one specimen in her lab—a fellow bridal prospect offers a lifesaver: lots of cash to rent her mobile lab. Anastasia (“Nastia”) plans to take hostage one hundred of the visiting bachelors, luring them with a promise of extra-special entertainment, starting with an Escape Room. Such a scandal would surely force Nastia’s missing mother, Iolanta—a notorious activist against Eastern Europe’s lucrative bridal industry—to return to her anxious daughters.

But wait, whose story is this? Suddenly, a Ukrainian writer transplanted to Canada as a child (meet our real life author) is arguing with her literary agent as she watches horrifying messages from the homeland ... where Russia is launching its brutal February 2022 invasion. Nastia’s disorganized plan crumbles as bombs begin exploding and tanks appear. She, her sister Solomiya (“Sol”), and Yeta, who insists on driving the lab, are stuck with a measly twelve puzzled and angry bachelor prisoners. Among them, Pasha and Bertrand are salient voices. But news of a rare gastropod sighting sends Yeva hurtling to the rescue taking the whole kit and caboodle along in her awkward vehicle—right into the war zone. And into the midst of a staged propaganda film the Russians are already working on.

The emotional range represented by this ramshackle crew and its distinctive characters is as broad as the issues within, over and above the pain of war. Author Reva even shares her editing decisions. Each facet of the story shines with a longing, a searching for self-placement, not without cynicism and black humour. As I write, this astonishing novel has been chosen for the Booker Prize long list!

Snips

▪ But that’s not why Yeva loved them, not really. Snails could’ve been useless, purely ornamental, and she’d still have scoured every leaf and grass blade for them. She could spend hours watching them in their terrariums, hours while her own mind slowed, slowed, emptied. (9)

▪ “It has to be senseless so it’ll scare off other foreign men from coming here, and the whole industry will collapse, not just in Ukraine but all over the world.” (63)

▪ Bernard was in Kyiv not just to find a bride but to recruit cheap tech talent and models for social media feeds. “Business,” he’d told Pasha with a wink, “mostly.” (89)

▪ “If we hadn’t met, if it weren’t for my plan, if it weren’t for me, you’d be dead.” (182)

▪ “What if it’s America engineering another fake war to fund weapons contracts and feed its own economy?” (210)

▪ All twelve pairs of eyes swiveled from Yeva to the soldiers, and the curses stopped. ... The bachelors began filing out, hunched, wincing as they unfolded sore joints. (253)

▪ “I want the skinny girl to go up front, to be the face of the Ukrainians.” (262)

▪ Towering over them, what Pasha guessed was the administration building, hefty and Greek-columned. Russian flags hung from it—white, blue, and red stripes bright as an Aquafresh toothpaste ad. (267)

Henry Porter. The Enigma Girl. 2024. USA: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025.

The first few pages flood us with so many names and references it almost feels like waterboarding. Our main character is Alice “Slim” Parsons, recently undercover for MI5; she’d attacked a well-known money-launderer in a private jet over Turkiye, unintentionally aborting the agency’s elaborate plan to trap the guy. Volunteering at an archaeological dig managed by Dr Dougal Hass, Slim – as she prefers – is in big trouble with her bosses but she also incurred a hit order from powerful Ivan Guest whose jaw she broke. Her alcoholic mother was attacked in her home despite security protections; hospitalized, mom Diana learns she is dying. In amends for her prior behaviour, Slim is not fired, due to efforts by MI5 deputy director Oliver Halfknight, but she’s offered a prosaic job posing as a journalist. Thus a slew of names flies in short order from a) a series of MI5 personnel, and b) staff of her new employer, a media publishing company called Middle Kingdom (“MK”) that exposes all manner of corruption.

Slim deals with numerous overlapping issues: care for her mom, unfamiliar living quarters on a canal boat, watching her back for a hit man, many topics to research and write for the busy chiefs at MK—Abigail and Dan—and private pressure from MI5 to discover and report where these journalists obtain classified government information. All this takes place in the area of Maynard Keynes and Bletchley Park with its WWII enigma-breaking history. Then Slim’s new mandate: persuade the super-skilled tech guy at MK to decode the cryptic pages stolen from Guest. In exchange she wants MI5 to devote resources to finding her brother Matthew who disappeared years ago. One simple story assignment leads into dangerous human trafficking; Guest’s powerful corrupting influence is everywhere.

In such a furious pace in so many directions, Slim switches gears as needed between journalist and spy. The woman’s moral compass is more in tune with MK than MI5, meaning she responds to orders according to her own principles (the author’s social conscience is not subtle). Who will catch up to her? Or catch her, period?! And I haven’t even mentioned her hilarious friend Bridie. Unforgettable characters and a sizzling, action-crammed winner from an author I’d never read before!

Bits

▪ “None of this makes sense. What’s going on? You were my friend, Tom. We worked together. You can tell me.” (132)

▪ “My father, your grandfather, became one of the most successful double agents of the Cold War.” (144)

▪ Ivan Guest had him tortured and murdered and dumped. And Guest is still free. (200)

▪ Gethin dances back as Slim moves to swing at him. Now she sees he has a knife in his hand, but her worry is that he will turn and run for help. (230)

▪ “How can we protect you when you go off and tangle with some of the most violent men in the country?” (238)

▪ It seems like she’s lined herself up for dismissal by both MI5 and the organisation that she’s infiltrated on the same day, a feat probably never achieved before in the history of the Security Service. (276)

▪ “I feel like having a baby and it seems to me that Dougal would make lovely babies and he’d be a terrific, Viking warlord dad, don’t you think?” (283)

▪ “They are Mr Halfknight’s people, but they are known as the Mills Irregulars because I put them together and Mr Halfknight would not want his name attached to that kind of outfit, although it’s entirely legal and above board.” (295)