Maria Reva writes novels, short stories, and opera libretti. She was born in Ukraine and grew up in Vancouver BC, retaining a connection to Ukraine through visits to family. Both her books – the linked short story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear and the more recent novel Endling – focus on life in Ukraine at different historical junctures.
As Endling opens, life is unfolding relatively normally in Kyiv despite eight years of armed conflict with invading Russian forces in Crimea and the Donbas. The action focuses on a “romance tour” during which bachelors from North America and Europe, hoping to find “the One,” are introduced to, and if all goes well embark on dates with, Ukrainian women (the brides). Yeva, a conservation scientist, is working as a bride to fund her quest to save Ukraine’s snail species from extinction, namely from becoming endlings because of a failure to reproduce. Nastia, another bride, has joined the agency in order to track down her mother, a notorious feminist activist whose radical topless protests have long targeted the romance tour industry. Solomiya, Nastia’s sister and self-appointed protector, is employed by the agency as an interpreter. The three women eventually kidnap thirteen bachelors in Yeva’s mobile lab and take off across Ukraine just as Russian troops commence the February 2022 invasion.
The farcical tone of the novel begins to shift as the grim horrors of war intrude. War also seems to cause a breach in the fourth wall as the author shows up on the page to wrestle with the problem of living in placid Vancouver and writing about a fictional Ukrainian romance tour while, in real life, Ukraine is undergoing a nightmare of destruction and death. Although the story of renegade brides, kidnapped bachelors, and Yeva’s quixotic romance tour for dying gastropods is picked up again, the slippages between farce and nightmare, as well as authorial and personal voice, become more frequent.
Interviewed by Hester Lessard
Hester Lessard (HL): In both your books, there is a central character who has lost their parents but who eventually finds a substitute parent. In Endling, at the very moment Nastia discovers she can afford to lose her mother, she also realizes the importance to her of Yeva’s tutelage and guardianship. What is the role of these orphan/parent relationships in your work?
Maria Reva (MR): This is going to sound cold and clinical, but orphaned children make for more interesting characters in fiction. They aren’t bound by the same rules as those who live under guardianship. There is a reason why young protagonists in children’s and YA books are often orphaned (think Series of Unfortunate Events) or have absentee parents. That’s what makes these protagonists step up and determine their own fates, be the heroes of their own stories. Plus, whether or not readers are orphaned themselves, many can still relate to the fear of abandonment. It’s primal.
HL: Endling plays with the distinction between real and make believe. For example, the romance tour stages fantasy dates and excursions for bachelors and prospective brides. As well, the Russians, after smashing through Kherson, stage and film a scene of gratitude by Ukrainians for Russia’s liberation of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the bachelors trapped within Yeva’s van are convinced the sound of bombs exploding is fireworks and the Russian troops are actors, all part of their tour package. And to top it all off, cheerful untroubled life in Vancouver seems unreal compared to the urgency and desperation of life in Ukraine. Why are reality and unreality so entangled throughout Endling?
MR: When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, my sense of reality split into two: my relatives calling from besieged Ukraine, my “normal” life in Vancouver under peaceful skies. For a while it was hard to believe the war was even happening, and I could see how a person could go down the conspiracy rabbit hole and convince themselves it wasn’t. Much like what happened during the pandemic. In Endling,the kidnapped Westerners refuse to believe the war is real, even as it’s staring them in the face. It’s too much to process in that moment. I do empathize with that.
HL: The romance tour is presented as tawdry, exploitive, and blatantly sexist. At the same time, you portray at least some of the bachelors, particularly Pasha, as sympathetic in their yearning for love. Indeed, Pasha eventually finds ‘the One,’ as does Lefty the snail, and, quite wonderfully, both gain a new life in the process. Are these just fleeting moments of optimism and delight, or do they figure more significantly in your portrait of life in Ukraine? In other words, is it fair to characterize Endling as an optimistic book, despite the harshness of its wartime context?
MR: It’s up to the reader to decide whether the book is optimistic or not. Pasha’s love-at-first-sight can have multiple interpretations, for example. Has he found his true love, his companion? Or is his love a fantasy he projects onto a stranger?
HL: The idea of the endling, the last of its kind, not only provides your title but recurs as an image of tragedy and loss throughout the work. Could you elaborate on your understanding of this image, its various dimensions, and its role in the novel?
MR: It does indeed have multiple dimensions. There’s Lefty the snail, the last of his species. There’s Yeva, who does not want children despite familial pressure, and her feeling that she is the last of the line. Then there’s my grandfather, the last of my relatives who has “chosen” to remain in Kherson as the city is relentlessly attacked by Russians. The city empties out, but there he is. I suppose, on this front, the book is hopeful. Two of the three aforementioned endlings find companionship in the end.
HL: The figure of yourself, as the author of a book about a Ukrainian romance tour in the middle of the war with Russia, is portrayed in Endling as a person divided within herself and preoccupied with questions about home and belonging that remain unresolved. Did the process of writing Endling complicate or alter your understanding of the relationship between politics and art, and the role of writers who, like you, are both inside and outside of a culture under threat?
MR: When one’s culture is not under threat, it’s much easier to draw the (illusory?) line between art vs. politics. When a culture and its language are under attack, however, any act of art-making (whether or not it directly speaks to the attack) becomes an act of resistance. It’s inherently political. To call oneself apolitical is a peacetime luxury.
As for the role of writers like me, who are both inside and outside a threatened culture – I am one lens of many. There are brilliant writers living within Ukraine who write about the war (Andrey Kurkov, Yevhenia Kuznietsova, to name a couple), and there are the diaspora writers who offer their own perspective. I travelled within Ukraine to conduct research, but I wrote most of the book abroad. Endling offers a look into the war but also speaks to the confusion and dislocation so many of us feel as we watch atrocities from abroad. And the book couches the difficult parts in dark humour – a Slavic tradition, yes, and a survival mechanism.