The Last Animal

by Abby Geni

Overview

The Last Animal by Abby Geni is that rare literary find — a remarkable series of stories unified around one theme: people who use the interface between the human and the natural world to contend with their modern challenges of love, loss, and family life. These are vibrant, weighty stories that herald the arrival of a young writer of surprising feeling and depth.

“Terror Birds” tracks the dissolution of a marriage set against an ostrich farm in the sweltering Arizona desert; “Dharma at the Gate” features the tempest of young love as a teenaged girl must choose between man’s best friend, her damaged boyfriend, and a beckoning future; “Captivity” follows an octopus handler at an aquarium still haunted by the disappearance of her brother years ago; “The Girls of Apache Bryn Mawr” details a Greek chorus of Jewish girls at a summer camp whose favorite counselor goes missing under suspicious circumstances; “In the Spirit Room” centers on a scientist suffering the heartbreaking loss of a parent from Alzheimer’s while living in the natural history museum where they both worked; in “Fire Blight” a father grieving over his wife’s recent miscarriage finds an outlet for comfort in their backyard garden and makes a surprising discovery on how to cherish living things; and in the title story, a retired woman traces the steps of the husband who left her thirty years ago, burning the letters he had sent along the way, while the luminous and exotic wildlife of the Pacific Ocean opens up to receive her.

Unflinching, exciting, ambitious and heartfelt, The Last Animal takes readers through a menagerie of settings and landscapes as it underscores the connection between all living things.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619024373
Publisher:	Counterpoint Press
Publication date:	10/14/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	544,538
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Abby Geni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of an Iowa Fellowship. “Captivity” won first place in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and was listed in 2010 Best American Short Stories ; it was also selected for inclusion in New Stories from the Midwest , published by Ohio University Press. Her stories have also received Honorable Mentions in the Kate Baverman Short Story Prize and in Glimmer Train ’s Very Short Fiction Competition. She lives in Chicago, where she is at work on a novel.

Editorial Reviews

09/02/2013
This uneven debut collection of stories sets the familiar motifs of infidelity, heartbreak, and loss against unfamiliar and often exciting backdrops, and successfully interlocks human foibles with a single theme: the profound coloring of our relationships by our experience of the natural world. In "Terror Birds," the dissolution of a marriage comes to a violent conclusion on an ostrich farm; in "Captivity," an octopus handler becomes caught up in a mystery surrounding her missing brother; and in "Dharma at the Gate," a girl with an emotionally abusive boyfriend writes in her journal, "Without my dog... I would not know how to feel certain things. Without him, I do not believe I would ever feel joy." Varied in perspective and setting, the stories take on an almost mythical quality. Unfortunately, while the stories and the people telling them are diverse, the prose is not, and midway through the collection, it becomes saccharine and cloying. Every character sounds the same and seems to speak through Geni's narrative voice, which is particularly a problem in "Terror Birds," where the shifting of perspective from mother to son underscores Geni's inability to break free of her own stylistic tics. This collection shows brooding promise but lacks the right filter through which to render it. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Last Animal

A Finalist for the 2014 Orion Book Award for Fiction

“Human predicaments are complemented by the wild natural world in this excellent debut story collection from Chicago-based author Geni. The characters and events here are unusual and far-reaching, but Geni's careful craftsmanship renders them immediate and real. Each story is threaded with page-turning, deeply felt tension, yet each has also been planted with a seed of magic in varying stages of growth.. An entrancing collection, recommended even for those who generally shy away from short story.” — Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

“The short stories in Geni's debut collection beautifully reveal how exposure to nature helps people in emotional pain to recover. In each well-researched piece, Geni vividly depicts the setting, as well as the animals or plants that play important roles…All ten stories here are wonderfully written, with precise language and a true compassion for the hardships of the characters. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (Starred)

“ The Last Animal by Abby Geni is the rare short story collection that's as coherent and powerful as a well-constructed novel. It begs to be read straight through rather than sampled casually. Although each story stands on its own, as an ensemble, their brilliance becomes apparent… Geni's prose is clean and slightly dreamlike, in an intimate voice that lingers occasionally on glimmering sensory details…Reading The Last Animal is like glimpsing a distant, hauntingly familiar shore illuminated by the rotating beam of a lighthouse.” — Shelf Awareness, (Starred)

“Geni’s first book puts us on notice. Here is a fiction writer who perceives the many forms of consciousness at work on the planet. In shrewd, sure stories, Geni registers the life force of trees, deciphers the confusions of human emotions, and considers the mystery of our interactions with other species… Endangerment, disappearance, isolation, love adrift, the attempt to hold on to and define life—Geni illuminates each condition and effort with keen realism and empathetic imagination to wondrously disquieting effect.” — Booklist

"I have known for a while that Abby Geni is a brilliant writer, and I'm happy that at last the world will find out. These are sharp, incisive, thoughtful, and utterly original stories, and I recommend this book with all my heart!" —Dan Chaon, National Book Award Finalist, author of Stay Awake and Await Your Reply

“Combining the cool precision of a naturalist with the heart of a born storyteller, Abby Geni catalogues an astounding array of characters whose lives have been undone by the mysterious departures and disappearances of loved ones. Instead of solving these mysteries, she plunges us deeper into them, and the results, like so many of the creatures in this book, are strange, haunting, and beautiful.” —Jim Gavin, Middle Men

“Abby Geni is a sharpshooter, a tamer of wild animals, a clear-eyed wonder. The Last Animal is a phenomenally ambitious debut collection and announces Geni's many talents to the world with the volume of a herd of stampeding elephants. I loved this book, and you will, too.” —Emma Straub

“Abby Geni’s worlds exist at the boundary between desolation and abundance, civilization and nature, love and loneliness. It is as if everything and everyone in these beautiful stories is at least half wild.” —Ramona Ausubel, A Guide to Being Born

"The Last Animal is a work of rare insight and beauty. Abby Geni's vision is expansive and haunting and wholly new, and she illuminates her characters' loneliness and longing in a way that will break your heart. This book is about love and animals and loss and the whole world; you must read it.” —Karen E. Bender, A Town of Empty Rooms

“It's rare to find a single story that's both highly imaginative while also unflinchingly earnest, thrilling while also deeply moving and wise. With The Last Animal we get ten stories that fulfill this ambitious criteria, and an amazing collection that announces Abby Geni as a powerful and original new voice in fiction." —Alan Heathcock, Volt

From the Publisher

The short stories in Geni's debut collection beautifully reveal how exposure to nature helps people in emotional pain to recover. In each well-researched piece, Geni vividly depicts the setting, as well as the animals or plants that play important roles. For example, in the title story, Delilah's experiences at an exotic Mexican beach allow her finally to make peace with the husband who deserted her years earlier. "In the Spirit Room" is set in the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC, where both Max and his mother are employed until she falls ill and passes away. After the funeral, Max decides to live at the museum and sleep in her workroom, the herbarium. By engrossing himself in her work, he is able to accept her death and move forward. VERDICT All ten stories here are wonderfully written, with precise language and a true compassion for the hardships of the characters. Highly recommended; readers will eagerly anticipate Geni's first novel.—Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

Library Journal

★ 2013-09-01
Human predicaments are complemented by the wild natural world in this excellent debut story collection from Chicago-based author Geni. The characters and events here are unusual and far-reaching, but Geni's careful craftsmanship renders them immediate and real. Each story is threaded with page-turning, deeply felt tension, yet each has also been planted with a seed of magic in varying stages of growth. In the collection's award-winning piece, "Captivity," the narrator works at the Chicago Aquarium, specializing in octopuses, which she feeds in-tank, wetsuit-clad, while haunted by her missing brother. In "Terror Birds," an ordinary family drama plays out with high stakes on an ostrich farm in the desert. "Isaiah on Sunday" and "In the Spirit Room" explore the loss of parents; "Landscaping" (the seed of magic here growing away from realism into striking lyricism) and "Fire Blight" show heartache from the parents' sides. Broken families are a theme, and the people in these stories experience the fallout with unflinching awareness. Likewise, Geni is not afraid to make readers sit with an uncomfortable situation or watch characters struggle with difficult decisions. "Dharma at the Gate" follows a teenage girl and her dog as she contemplates a relationship that's holding her back; readers will ache for her freedom. "The Girls of Apache Bryn Mawr" has an anonymous narrator--the protagonists are bunked together in a camp cabin the summer their counselor disappears. "The Last Animal" and "Silence" center on older characters looking for a kind of closure, and both have a quieter tension. An entrancing collection, recommended even for those who generally shy away from short story.

Kirkus Reviews

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