World’s Last Zoo?: A Guest Post by Emma Sloley
Emma Sloley crafts a reflective and ultimately hopeful dystopian tale in which animals take center stage. When all the majestic creatures of nature are gone, what will become of our world? Read on for an exclusive essay from Emma on writing The Island of Last Things.
Hardcover $28.99
The Island of Last Things: A Novel
The Island of Last Things: A Novel
By Emma Sloley
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.99
A SOARING, PROPULSIVE, AND UNFORGETTABLE novel about two zookeepers at the last zoo in the world
A SOARING, PROPULSIVE, AND UNFORGETTABLE novel about two zookeepers at the last zoo in the world
A few years ago I jotted a stray idea down in my notes app: world’s last zoo?
If you’re someone like me who happens to love both animals and zoos, I think you’re always trying to resolve the dissonance between wanting connection with wild animals and finding the idea of captivity distressing. I felt this tension could be used to great effect in a story, especially if it were smuggled into a world in which animals are even more treasured and endangered than in our current one. That three-word question grew and shapeshifted and eventually became my novel The Island of Last Things.
I knew I wanted this zoo to be set on an island, but not an idyllic one. It needed to be fortified and militarized, so that it would be almost impossible to liberate an animal from there, should someone (hint, hint) desire such a thing. This narrative wishlist soon led me to the shores of the world’s most notorious prison island—Alcatraz. I knew right away I’d found my setting, in this lonely place where a wild beauty still persists amid the grim, almost Gothic remnants of the old prison.
In a way, the characters emerged out of this contradiction. The story’s protagonist, a keeper named Camille, loves her work with the animals and sees the zoo as a regrettable but crucial last resort in a world ravaged by blights. Sailor, a firebrand newly arrived from Paris Zoo, will accept nothing short of liberation. The bond between these two very different women deepens as they scheme to smuggle one of the prized animals off the island and start to reckon with the prospect of their own extinction.
The novel is a heist, in a way, and also a cautionary tale about how easily societies can slip into dystopia. But I hope it also offers a path to reconsidering our sometimes-fraught relationship with the natural world, and the importance of maintaining curiosity in our interactions with other species. Spend time quietly observing any wild creature and you’ll quickly notice their similarities to humans: they have routines, they commute, they argue with one another, they revisit places where something nice happened to them. I love those reminders of our connectedness.
While researching the book I spent a couple of months dog-sitting in San Francisco, and at dawn I’d take Maggie the labradoodle for a walk up to Fort Mason, an urban park overlooking San Francisco Bay. Some mornings we’d see coyotes up there. The first time it happened, I was curious what the interaction between these two dogs—one wild and free to roam, the other domesticated and pampered—would be. Well, sweet-tempered Maggie went absolutely ballistic on seeing the coyote, while the coyote regarded her with a calm, almost bored composure. To encounter this enigmatic avatar of wildness in such a busy residential setting, with the city’s famous fog swirling and Alcatraz brooding in the bay just beyond, was so incredible. A reminder that nature, against all odds, insists upon itself.
