The Extinction of Irena Rey

De: Jennifer Croft

Narrado por: Lanessa Tremblett

Bloomsbury presents The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft, read by Lanessa Tremblett.

National Bestseller
Named a must read by NPR, People, Vanity Fair, Electric Literature, Nylon, Alta Journal, CrimeReads and Debutiful
Named a most anticipated book by Elle, The Millions, Bustle, Lit Hub, Dandelion Chandelier, Zibby Mag, Bookpage, and The Rumpus

“Oh my mushrooms, The Extinction of Irena Rey is incredibly strange, savvy, sly and hard to classify. I also couldn't put it down.” —The New York Times, Editors’ Choice

From the International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, an utterly beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.

Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.

The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets—and deceptions—of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.

This hilarious, thought-provoking debut novel is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses.©2024 Jennifer Croft (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

good story, unfortunate reading performance

I didn’t like the reader’s interpretation of dialogue. Her “voices” for the characters were annoying.

A book about obsession

What happens when 9 translators get obsessed with the writer they are translating for? Beautifully written but hard to stay focused on content. Made myself finish the book

beautiful language, good questions, unlikeable characters and frustrating ending.

A pet peeve: I thought I was going to lose it every time the narrator pronounced it "Chaise LONG"

I found myself wanting to read Grey Eminence more than The Extinction, wanting to see and live in Białowieża forest more than watch these 9 translators shuffle through their indecision.

Is it a mystery? Yes. But it's unresolved, and not in the way that reveals something new instead. I found the resolution left too many questions about logistics and intent. Why did Irena do what she did? I still don't know. And neither do the translators.

This book gave me a lot of miscellany to think about: the role of translators, of conservation, the invasion of land and mind. But I'm not sure the story landed as well as was planned. Ultimately I was exhausted listening to the petty squabbles of the two main translators, and the jealousy of Spanish around Swedish. I'm unsure why that relationship was even relevant. So many symbols left unexplored in this book. So many people I still don't know.

Annoying vocal fry hurts the book.

The book is great but marred by the narrator’s annoying vocal fry at the end of nearly all of her sentences. Hurts the ears after a while and scratches the mind. It sounds like the narrator just woke up from a long snooze. She could have been directed not to that as she has a pleasant tone and not a bad delivery otherwise. This book deserves to be re-recorded with more meticulous direction.

Overrated

Terrible reader of a shallow story. There are 1 million books better than this, so move on and pick a different one.

Unexpected ending with a brilliant story

Such keen insight into translation as an art and human nature/psyche. So many beautiful descriptions of nature, history and language. A joy to read/listen with a wild ending that left me stunned. Much different than the author’s previous novel, “Homesick,” and delivering just as much soul and introspection. Loved Extinction immensely and looking forward for more.

Don’t Get It

Read a lot of books, more than 50 per year, and I didn’t’ understand anything about this book. WSJ had to t as top books ok in 2024. No clue how they conclude this.

Unique plot

Weird, original, most unusual book, not an easy read, your brain hurts trying to keep up. Would love to see Białowieża in Poland some day.

This book makes no sense to me

Perhaps it’s not my genre, perhaps it’s that it is being read to me. However, I am an hour in, and it is completely frustrating. I don’t know if the translator notes are an aspect of the novel or actually notes from the translator. The fawning of the translators over ‘Irena’, is just odd. The novel jumps from topic to topic. It’s just not worth my time to figure out. On top of that, the narration is a bit stilted.