The Endling
Overview
A feminist utopia crumbles with one impossible birth.
On an isolated mountaintop, a small feminist community is fracturing under the weight of ideological divides and dwindling numbers. Mila struggles to hold the women together, while deeper in the bush her aunt Frank — an ailing recluse — lives with only her dog, Chicken Midnight, for company. Nearby, an orchid endling approaches its own death, and the extinction of its entire species.
As Frank grows increasingly unwell and secretive about her condition, the community women begin mysteriously falling pregnant. When Mila gives birth to the only boy, their hardline separatist ideals face an impossible test. Vividly expressed, wildly funny, and wholly original, The Endling examines the volatile intersection of community and politics, exploring what happens when the borders we construct between species, between sexes, between self and world prove more porous than we imagine.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Hardback
- 216mm x 135mm
- 272 pages
- 9781917189347
- GBP£16.99
- 9 April 2026
- World
Categories
Praise
‘A beguiling look at what happens when hope and delusion clash with the realities of primitive conditions and internecine squabbles … Jobe’s writing about the natural world is sensuous, visceral, and muscular.’
‘Jobe’s descriptions of the flora and fauna — and of the human body … have a physicality that engages the senses … The novel’s hallucinogenic fever-dream of a climax sees the concerns around climate change, which simmer for most of the novel, boil to the surface. Those final pages are vivid and disturbing, and written with remarkable control of rhythm and tone. By the breathless end, we’re left with the impression that, in a last-ditch attempt to survive, the natural world will go to extreme lengths to protect itself from our more radical inclinations.’
About the Author
Keely Jobe is a writer of fiction and nonfiction living on the east coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania with her partner and two staffies. Her work has appeared in The Monthly, Island Magazine, Australian Geographic, and Cosmos. She has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tasmania and is the nonfiction editor at Island Magazine. The Endling is her first novel.

