The Last Animal by Abby Geni is the rare short story collection that's as coherent and powerful as a well-constructed novel. It begs to be read straight through rather than sampled casually. Although each story stands on its own, as an ensemble, their brilliance becomes apparent. They build quietly on one another, examining the same dark little corners of the human experience from vastly different angles.
Geni's prose is clean and slightly dreamlike, in an intimate voice that lingers occasionally on glimmering sensory details. A suburban forest is "as shadowy and chaotic as deep ocean"; a son walks away from his mother, "following the marbled disc of the rising earth." Describing unexpected rain, she writes that "the sky opened suddenly, dropping a collision of water on the tender plants."
Reading The Last Animal is like glimpsing a distant, hauntingly familiar shore illuminated by the rotating beam of a lighthouse. In "Fire Blight," the illness of an orchard reflects the illness of a relationship, while elsewhere a sapling helps a couple find the future after a painful miscarriage. In "Terror Birds," the rage of a young child at his philandering father is expressed by a murderous flock of ostriches. In the title story, a manatee and a giant sea turtle help a woman lay the ghost of her husband to rest. In all cases, the natural world helps people find a place beyond their grief. There is no answer here--only luminous writing about pain and the possibility of peace. --Emma Page, bookseller at Island Books, Mercer Island, Wash.