The Island of Last Things
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Camille is a keeper at the last zoo in the world, on Alcatraz Island. Reserved around humans, she is happy to spend her days caring for chimpanzees and tree frogs, and a magnificent, restless jaguar, while outside nature crumbles. Resistance groups and brutal cartels are fighting to shape the world’s future, but Camille is safe within her routines.
Then a new zookeeper, Sailor, arrives. Glamorous and reckless, she seems to see something in Camille that no one has before. When Sailor whispers about a secret sanctuary where wild animals roam free, Camille begins to imagine a new kind of life, with Sailor by her side.
Sailor has a plan, and she wants Camille to be a part of it. Which means Camille must decide if she’s ready to risk everything for the promise of a better world.
Propulsive and fiercely hopeful, with a heart-stopping final twist, The Island of Last Things is an elegy for a disappearing world, and a gorgeous vision for the future.
Emma Sloley worked as an editor at Harper’s Bazaar Australia before moving to New York to pursue a career as a travel journalist and author. Her short fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in many literary magazines and her debut novel, Disaster’s Children, was published in 2019. Emma currently divides her time between California and the city of Mérida, Mexico.
'Sometimes a new author will sidle up and whisper in your ear, and sometimes she’ll grab you by the neck. Emma Sloley is in the latter camp.' Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers
'Absorbing, daring, and ultimately hopeful, The Island of Last Things is at once a love letter to the natural world and a warning of what could become of us all if we let it whither.' Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, author of What We Fed To The Manticore
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A zoo at the end of the world—that’s the enticing premise of Emma Sloley’s second novel, which sees zookeepers on Alcatraz looking after the last members of different species while the environment outside collapses and humans battle over the scraps. On top of this subtle world-building comes the relationship between Camille and Sailor, their conversations and interactions driving the plot towards a twisty conclusion. Sloley’s narrative will have you pondering the things worth fighting for in life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sloley (Disaster's Children) imbues this stirring near-future ecological disaster drama with a fierce sense of hope. It's set on San Francisco's Alcatraz Island, where the former prison has been retrofitted as a zoo. It's the last of its kind, following a mold blight that caused mass extinctions. Camille, one of the zookeepers, enjoys caring for the animals, whom she's always preferred to humans. She's never wanted to leave, at least not until the arrival of Sailor, an enigmatic zookeeper with a magnetic personality. Though the rule-following Camille is initially rankled by Sailor's intense conviction that animals should be free to experience life the way they did before the extinctions, she soon embraces Sailor's vision of a sanctuary where animals of all kinds can roam. The women hatch a plan to liberate one of the zoo's denizens: Achilles the crocodile, who has fallen ill. As they dodge militant guards and conformist administrative workers, Sailor must also contend with a cartel bent on snatching Achilles to sell on the black market. Sloley keeps the pages turning with a thrilling plot and an intriguing slow drip of information about this dystopian world. Readers will be hooked.
