The Endling

$18.00 USD

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
Paperback
Size
5.3in x 8.5in
Extent
272 pages
ISBN
9781964992334
RRP
USD$18.00
Pub date
23 June 2026
Rights held
World

Categories

Praise

“Keely Jobe’s intoxicating surrealistic novel … [is] electric and unnerving … The Endling follows a radical feminist community’s undoing.”

Michelle Anne-SchlingerForeword Reviews

“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.”

Ian MondLocus Magazine
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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. Keely lives in Tasmania.

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