Overview

Fast-paced and funny. Scientific and tender. A literary thriller featuring Auks. As if Hilary Mantel's The Giant, O'Brien met Robinson Crusoe, here is a story of one man's growing humanity amidst famine and extinction. Told in the vernacular of the day, this novel-as-notebook features a 19th-century ornithologist on a remote Irish island-from the author of indie favorite The Gospel of Orla. Fast-paced and funny. Scientific and tender. A literary thriller featuring Auks. As if Hilary Mantel's The Giant, O'Brien met Robinson Crusoe, here is a story of one man's growing humanity amidst famine and extinction. Told in the vernacular of the day, this novel-as-notebook features a 19th-century ornithologist on a remote Irish island-from the author of indie favorite The Gospel of Orla. Written in the form of a 19th-century notebook of ornithological observations, Field Notes from an Extinction follows the life and work of one Ignatius Green, a fictitious English scientist dispatched by the Royal Society to the remote island of Tor Mor off the northern Irish coast. Green, a widower, is single-minded and self-righteous, brilliant and bumbling. He is determined to set the scientific record straight on the mating rituals, feeding and care of hatchlings and other minutiae he can gather about the Great Auk (pinguinus impennis). Green's world is shattered when his monthly goods delivery arrives ravaged by the local Irish townsmen. His fury at their impertinence is matched only by his dismay at finding a small child amid the shipment--dirty, abandoned, mute, and utterly feral and unmanageable. Worse, the locals are growing restless and hungry. And there is talk sweeping the land of a terrifying woman with unnatural power. Green fights for his survival against brigands and hunger and, most fearsome, the resolve of a fierce and angry child. And, perhaps, for a wider understanding of family amidst roiling societal unrest.

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9781644215340

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Reviews

""I read Field Notes from an Extinction in one sitting, incapable of tearing myself away. Rarely have I read a contemporary novel that works so gracefully and yet so implacably on so many levels—dramatically, emotionally, and morally. It is a major accomplishment.""​ —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, winner of the National Medal of the Humanities and author of The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us

​""Eoghan Walls’s Field Notes from an Extinction is ingeniously rendered as ​a series of transmissions from an ornithologist stepping out of the shadows of his isolation to confront and contend with a creature beyond his realm of expertise: a human child. A historical novel that at times reads like a post-apocalyptic novel, in the best sense. Harrowing, shapeshifting, a strange and mesmerizing delight from the first page to the last.​"" —Kevin Moffett, National Book Award-longlisted author of Only Son ""Vividly told, original in form, ambitious in scope and completely winning in its characterisation of the unlikely pair at its centre, a devoted English ornithologist and the young Irish girl he is saddled with against his will, Field Notes From an Extinction winds tighter and tighter its noose of horror until almost unbearable – a stark and compelling tale. Eoghan Walls has immaculate comic timing and the heart of a tragedian who knows how to bide his time – and land his gut-punches."" —Lucy Caldwell, Author of These Days, and Multitudes; winner of the BBC Short Story Award and the Rooney Prize for Literature ""I read Field Notes from an Extinction in one sitting, incapable of tearing myself away. Rarely have I read a contemporary novel that works so gracefully and yet so implacably on so many levels—dramatically, emotionally, and morally. It is a major accomplishment.""​ —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, winner of the National Medal of the Humanities and author of The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us ""Told from Ignatius’s prickly perspective, the novel’s interplay between emotion, empathy, and humor is deft and compelling."" —Foreword Reviews

Author Information

EOGHAN WALLS is a Northern Irish poet. He has lived and worked in Ireland, Britain, Germany and Rwanda. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006, and his poetry has been shortlisted for multiple international awards, including the Bridport Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize and the Piggott Prize. He has published the first major translation of Heidegger's poetical works and currently teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University. The Gospel of Orla (Seven Stories Press; 2023), his debut novel, was an IndieNext and a Library Reads selection, and was called ""utterly convincing and fresh and original"" by Colm T ibin. His new novel is Field Notes from an Extinction.

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