How Yeva, Nastia, Solomiya, and the unloved men trapped in the back of a van try to hold onto what is precious changes the shape of their reality. In Endling a possibly last-of-its-kind snail named Lefty, a mother, a sister, love drives them to do the improbable during an invasion that no one believes is quite real. Love and heartache drive the narrative with its quirky narrators and structural interludes, but the novel is not maudlin or formulaic. The novel comments of the complexity of Ukraine’s culture and economy, “the West’s” misperception and generalizations about Ukrainian women, and the spectacle of the invasion. I read this novel a few months ago and it has stayed with me more than anything else I read in the past year.