#the extinction of irena rey

[whilereadingandwalking]

From around the world, Irena Rey's translators make their way to Białowieża Forest. They're ready to translate her magnus opus in their carefully practiced pattern: sitting in the midst of that strange forest, the last bit of the primeval forest that once spanned Europe, they will all translate together, under Irena's watchful eye. But shortly after their appearance, Irena disappears. In her absence, they'll be desperate to find meaning (as translators generally do) in all the things she's left behind, and their search blooms into a feverish mess of conflict, confusion, and the slow reveal of secrets the author's been keeping from them this entire time.

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft starts slowly, but builds steam. It's written by "Eli," the Spanish translator, who is perhaps the most devoted to Irena and her rules, who is horrified when her fellow translators begin to snoop, edit, rebel, and reveal information they'd been holding back. In a swirl of fungi, ethical quandaries, and cult-like worship, Eli writes a novel in Polish that has been translated for us, years later, into English by Alexis, one of her fellow translators.

Because increasingly, we realize: we can't trust Eli, disturbed the others' insistence on breaking her united, clean vision of Irena and of who they are to each other. But if we can't trust her, why would we be able to trust her translator, English herself, the character that Eli hated the most? In this literary entanglement reminiscent of Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, we realize more and more with each chapter that maybe Eli isn't telling us the truth, that maybe Alexis is editing a little too freely.

Once that ambiguity was introduced, I was hooked. The beginning was slow, but I'm okay with that. We have to think we can trust Eli and Alexis for just long enough to begin to doubt. And then you can see the riddles between the lines, the signals Eli's missing, the misinterpretations floating through the group. It's a vivid, fascinating novel and psychological thriller about their slow unspooling.

Content warnings for violence, gaslighting.

[rebeccadumaurier]

laughing my ass off. the extinction of irena rey has strong footnote game

[judgingbooksbycovers]

The Extinction of Irena Rey: A Novel

By Jennifer Croft.

[disasterbiwriter]

lol what the fuck did I just read

[dougwallen]

Jennifer Croft book review for The Big Issue Australia

[wttnblog]

9 March 2023 Book Releases That Should be On Your Radar

In a year of many false Springs, it’s hard to believe that it’s only March. Yesterday I was bundled up to brave below freezing temperatures and the day before I sat outside to read my book in a balmy 70 degrees. Nonetheless, it is only the third month of 2024. There’s quite a few incredible books coming out this month that you should most definitely be aware of. *Bookshop affiliate links allow…

[katereads]

Ok, so now that I've finished it? I regret not having read The Extinction of Irena Rey with a group (book club, class). Because I want to talk about, in no particular order:

The Death of the Author as, like, a concept

unreliable narrators

unreliable translators

cults that aren't really cults as depicted in fiction like in this book and in The Secret History

books that are supposed to be satires of particular cultures and why The Secret History fails as a satire (look, I love that book but I think Donna Tartt thought it was a satire but I don't think it gets read that way) and why The Extinction of Irena Rey succeeds

but maybe it's just me

though I do think The Secret History takes Richard's trauma around the events seriously and maybe that's why

whereas I don't think I'm supposed to take the characters in The Extinction of Irena Rey seriously

authors stealing stories from the people around them

how I would have read it differently if I'd have read even one of Olga Tokarczuk's books beforehand

And I have no one around to babble at who will understand what the hell I'm talking about.

Reading The Extinction of Irena Rey feels like reading The Secret History for the first time.

[frecht]

my last 5 books on goodreads look soo good together it's a pity i haated one of them

[jbbartram-illu]

Hey! It's time for my Top Books of 2024 list! Also, this is the earliest I've ever posted it!!

Horse - Geraldine Brooks

No One Will Come Back for Us - Premee Mohamed

Toad - Katherine Dunn

The Vegetarian - Han Kang

The Tiger’s Wife - Téa Obreht

Dandelion Daughter - Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay

Whalefall - Daniel Kraus

8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster - Mirinae Lee

Chouette - Claire Oshetsky

The Centre - Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

The Morningside - Téa Obreht

The Extinction of Irena Rey - Jennifer Croft

Penric’s Progress - Lois McMaster Bujold

The Broken Earth Trilogy - N.K. Jemisin

Bones & All - Camille DeAngelis

Anomia - Jade Wallace

The Good Lord Bird - James McBride

Curiosity - Joan Thomas

The Bee Sting - Paul Murray

North Woods - Daniel Mason

Butter - Asako Yuzuki

The West Passage - Jared Pechaček

To see all 82 books I read this year, go here: jessicabartram.ca/books2024

& here are the disorganized screenshots of my top books from my instagram stories where I add very mini impressions once each book is done (if you like my book-picks & want to see them throughout the year, feel free to follow me over there @ jbbartram!).

[heavenlyyshecomes]

using tumblr as a notepad to keep a list of books revolving around writers and scholars and their obsession with other literary figures, mostly fiction

possession, a. s. byatt

my death, lisa tuttle

the extinction of irena rey, jennifer croft

the long form, kate briggs

the guest lecture, martin riker

forgottenness, tanya maljartschuk

paul celan and the trans-tibetan angel, yoko tawada & susan bernofsny (translator)

[clonerightsagenda]

#recently read May 24

Behold me at full power (off work for half the month).

Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang. Four young adults come together to make contact with an alien spaceship before the world's warring alliances can start an unwinnable conflict. *By the author of Folding Beijing which is why I picked it up, but a lot lighter and more optimistic, feels like series setup.

Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice. Sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow. Post-apocalypse travel novel centering an Anishinaabe community.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. Teenage Sasha is blackmailed into attending an institute where students struggle with incomprehensible and reality-bending lessons to unclear ends. *I definitely see this as a readalike to Library of Mount Char and greatly preferred it. Also shoutout to the goodreads review that's just 'would you still love me if I was a word'.

The Morningside by Téa Obreht. In a flood-ravaged near future, a young refugee fascinated by her aunt's folktales becomes dangerously obsessed with the mysterious woman living in her apartment building's penthouse.

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan. After she and her father move into an old house filled with eccentric tenants, Sana begins to uncover the tragic history of its original inhabitants.

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft. A group of translators meet to translate an author's newest work, only to be set adrift unsure of their purpose after she disappears. The story is framed as one translator's account translated into English by one of her colleagues. *I enjoyed the meta concept and themes, although the book itself got messy.

Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi. A collection of speculative fiction featuring Nigerian characters and culture. I recognized "Comments on Your Provisional Patent Applications for an Eternal Spirit Core".

Synners by Pat Cadigan. A big corporation pushes out untested brain sockets, which goes about as well as you'd expect. *Early cyberpunk is so funny bc the authors have these wild ideas about the future but cannot comprehend wireless. Also I think a lot of the problems in cyberpunk could be avoided if everyone wasn't doing 10 drugs at once.

[origami10]

🐚 a book you expected to like but didn’t

The Extinction of Irena Rey. It was theoretically about translation, and the main characters are translators, but it felt like it set up questions, then only got 10% of the way through answering them before it was over. And it was totally weird.

[rebeccadumaurier]

2024 Reading in Review

Forgot to post this whoops. Anyway it was a pretty good reading year, italicized the stuff I generally liked and bolded my favorites.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers

Lonely Castle in the Mirror, Mizuki Tsujimura, trans. Philip Gabriel

Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest, Finn Brunton

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, Will Larson

Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett

Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino, trans. William Weaver

Hench, Natalie Walschots

A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold

Bullet Train, Kotaro Isaka, trans. Sam Malissa

The Unpassing, Chia-Chia Lin

Penance, Eliza Clarke

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novel #3), Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play, Cliff Kuang

Death Notice, Zhou Haohui, trans. Zac Haluza

Fate (Death Notice #2), Zhou Haohui, trans. Zac Haluza

Hangsaman, Shirley Jackson

The Years, Annie Ernaux, trans. Alison Strayer

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

Paradise Rot, Jenny Hval, trans. Marjam Idriss

Y/N, Esther Yi

The Lonely City, Olivia Laing

Cocoon, Zhang Yueran, trans. Jeremy Tiang

Love in the Big City, Sang-Young Park, trans. Anton Hur

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Kawai Strong Washburn

The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside, Xiaowei Wang

The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald, trans. Michael Hulse

Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel, Yoko Tawada, trans. Susan Bernofsky

Radiance, Catherynne M. Valente

Three Strong Women, Marie NDiaye, trans. John Fletcher

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler

Vladivostok Circus, Elisa Shua Dusapin, trans. Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Jawbone, Monica Ojeda, trans. Sarah Booker

The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you, Rob Fitzpatrick

Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion

The Extinction of Irena Rey, Jennifer Croft

Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner

Greek Lessons, Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, Lundy Bancroft

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Boy, Snow, Bird, Helen Oyeyemi

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, Elif Batuman

[baejax-the-great]

17 for the book asks!

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Gonna give another plug for The Extinction of Irena Rey because I just looked it up on Goodreads and it has a pretty bad average rating, lmao. I think it was a Goodreads recommendation to me, and I read it about a month after it was released not knowing a thing about it, and again, I was charmed by how wacky it was. Given how much I disagree with the ratings of some other books on Goodreads, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I am alone in this, but hey, if you follow my blog, maybe you are also a weirdo.

[phthalology]

no writing today on account of starting to read a book that pulled me in immediately (The Extinction of Irena Rey). Thursday, I think, I’ll get a few hours of run-up and then have time for both fiction writing and submissions. If I can do it after the day job.

[therehavebeenstranger]

i've developed a new favorite very specific literary genre and it's called Being a Literary Translator Makes You Insane, The Novel, including but not limited to:

-the extinction of irena rey, jennifer croft

-mauve desert by nicole brossard (which i read itself in translation by susanne de lotbiniere-harwood, imagine that shit!)

-the centre, ayesha manazir siddiqi

there has to be more but i'm blanking.....the translators are not alright