The intriguing premise of Jennifer Croft’s debut novel will prompt readers to wonder what kind of book this is. A fiendish whodunit? A riddling thriller about why the lady vanishes? A slice of psychological horror in which the assembled characters get nastily bumped off, one after the other? In fact, The Extinction of Irena Rey is something quite different. It is also, to a large extent, something quite brilliant. Croft subverts expectations with a blackly comic, fiercely inventive drama that explores the cult of celebrity and the art of translation (an art this critically acclaimed, award-winning translator has mastered) while spotlighting disparate individuals working together and falling apart ... However, as Croft thickens her plot, she also clutters her narrative, often impeding momentum ... But during Croft’s more streamlined sections, there is much to admire and enjoy ... a frequently dizzying display, which leaves the reader both disoriented and exhilarated.
Incredibly strange, savvy, sly and hard to classify. I also couldn’t put it down ... What I did not expect was that Croft’s debut would frolic so joyfully, so rigorously, in the absurd, the inane, and stay there from start to finish. Or that I’d end up frolicking with her. Reader, if you’re looking to get your heart thrashed, this may not be the novel for you. But if you’re up for a romp through a wilderness of ideas, innuendo and ecological intrigue (who knew there even was such a thing?), stay with me ... None of this craziness feels frivolous. On the contrary, the novel’s staked in anxieties about climate change, extinction and the unbalancing of nature thanks to art ... Mad with plot and language and gorgeous prose, and the result is a bacchanal, really, which is the opposite of extinction. Such is the irony of art.
Bizarre and brilliant ... The action is convoluted, engrossing and befuddling, a tramp through a thicket of clues and linguistic markers, set against a backdrop of bloody European history. Irena’s father—thought to have been killed in a duel—emerges alive, ancient and intact, with stories of the time he met Hermann Göring ... Croft’s great achievement is to marshal this mushrooming material with lightness and élan. For The Extinction of Irena Rey is above all tremendous fun.
On its surface, The Extinction of Irena Rey is a literary whodunit, with whiffs of...semiotic absurdity ... Croft has constructed a canny exploration of how even English, despite its unique dominance, might be influenced by its brushes with the mysterious process that is translation.
Croft's novel is about a lot of things: the complexities and beauties of translation, climate change and the mass extinction of species, art's potential to save or destroy the world, obsession, lust, and much more ... Surprised me at every turn, moving between profound observations about nature, art, and communication (which, I'd argue, always involves various forms of translation) and surreal and baffling happenings that push the characters into a kind of fever-dream reality. Croft has certainly added 'novelist' to the list of writing-related skills she excels at, and what a joy that is to witness.
Croft has been fascinated by translation since she was a child, and this novel is a deep dive into the complexities and ambiguities of the role. A translator’s job is to render the original as faithfully as possible, yet they are also creating a new work of their own with every word they type. It’s an artistic paradox, the kind that can’t be represented straightforwardly in fiction. It needs something special – and Croft does not disappoint ... There’s a lot going on here; indeed, the book resembles Białowieża forest in its wild and fertile proliferation of ideas. Croft just about manages to keep it all together, although her fondness for themes and metaphors comes at the expense of character development. The warring English and Spanish are a marvellous double act, but others who could also have been interesting (Serbian and Slovenian, for instance) are neglected. And the ending, which unites the group once more, falls a little flat after the intense 300-page buildup that has gone before. But it is to Croft’s credit that she sustains her claustrophobic narrative so deftly, with plenty of plot twists.
Both gossipy and profound, the novel makes hay with intellectual questions of Croft’s day job as well as the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the translation trade.
The novel becomes not just a literary thriller but an examination of the delicate mix of desire, impersonation, ambition, and selfishness that the art of literary translation requires ... [Croft] is elastic in tone, as comfortable in low registers as she is in high ones. Her prose is as funny as it is elegant; it would be propulsive if it weren’t so packed with words, phrases, and translation debates worth appreciating.
Croft combines big questions with generous, intuitive humor: How do we make art in a climate emergency? Is the concept of a 'mother tongue' relevant in our migratory world? And can you really still have respect for an author if she organizes her books by color? It’s a rare book that’s equally gifted at provoking thought and laughter. The Extinction of Irena Rey is certainly strange, but it’s also strangely beautiful—I hung on every word and cannot wait for a second read. Croft has reinvented ecofiction with this seductive, erudite, and terribly funny tale about 'book people.'
Through this trippy mix of high concept and high tension, Croft takes a real chunk out of the convention of deifying the author as an all-powerful genius to whom translators must be beholden. Reading The Extinction of Irena Rey is like encountering a mischievous forest spirit, full of riddles and gloriously disorienting, then somehow getting back out of the woods alive.
Croft...both celebrates and lampoons translation communities, which being both altruistic and parasitic, resemble the complex dynamics of forest biomes. Editorial footnotes, provided by the narrator’s own supposed translator, are delightfully wry. But beneath the satire and the metafiction lie a lament for our all-too-real ongoing ecocide and a desperate appeal that humans might emulate fungi and find sustenance within the destruction.
In time with the steady unveiling of Irena’s skeletons, the novel muses through questions related to aestheticism, Anthropocene ethics, method writing, awards-committee politics, and personal rivalries. Grey Eminence is unpacked, including its dystopian perspective that “art is the uniquely human impulse to relentlessly transform whatever we come into contact with, to undo in order to do or redo.” Exciting developments temper the story’s headiness leading up to its final, disillusioning confrontation. The Extinction of Irena Rey is an incisive literary novel that troubles the divide between art, its interpretation, and real life.
The building unease of the plot is offset by the back and forth between Emi’s text and Alexis’s footnotes, which add humor even as they cast doubt on events. Readers are left unsure what to trust, as the novel questions if true, accurate translation is possible and what is lost along the way ... a metatextual feast that will keep readers wondering even after the book concludes.
a wickedly funny mystery ... Each of the perils is absurdly entertaining in its own way, and the endangered forest’s fungi capture Emi’s imagination and provide Croft with a magical and metaphor-rich backdrop. Emi’s relationships with her colleagues, who are nicknamed for the languages they’re translating Irena’s novel into, further enliven the narrative as it reaches a poignant denouement. The novel’s greatest strength, however, lies in Croft’s energetic set pieces, demonstrated most mirthfully in the “catfight” that takes place between Emi and 'English,' whose footnotes provide her with a juicy opportunity for revenge. This is a blast.
Croft, a renowned translator in her own right (of Olga Tokarczuk, among others), makes for a wickedly funny satirist when it comes to some of the more obsequious behaviors involved in the translator-author relationship. At the same time—even in the midst of a joke—she writes profoundly about the philosophical stakes of translation ... Climate change, myth, and fungi are stirred into the mix as well, which certainly makes for an interesting canvas, if not an entirely successful one. Though her insights tend to inspire wonder, Croft’s storytelling can occasionally drag, and she sometimes seems to lose track of her characters, not all of whom feel fully fledged. A striking if imperfect novel about language, the earth, and what it means to make art.
