Endings

“Endings is my favourite kind of non-fiction: an ambitious, timely subject rendered in wonderful prose and filled with fascinating information by a writer who not only loves his subject but clearly loves this world.” —John Vaillant, bestselling author of The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival and Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast

“An erudite and philosophical tour of the natural world and its twin poles of creation and destruction, told with insight, wit, empathy, and optimism.” —Stephen R. Bown, bestselling author of The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire and Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada

“It is a testament to Griffin’s skill as a writer and a thinker that he can summon so much joy and wonder from a topic ostensibly so dark. You may think you know what this book contains, but you are wrong. It contains universes.” —Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration and In Trees: An Exploration

“A thoroughly researched, engrossing account of extinction across deep time and into the present … Highly recommended.” —Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW

“Poetic in tone, with rapturous descriptive passages and metaphors … [Endings] is filled with beauty and wonder.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A passionate call for change amid trying times.” —Publishers Weekly

“Inventive and wide-ranging.” —Foreword Reviews

“Griffin is both luminous and plain-speaking about our era of overwhelming loss, revealing that the extinction emergency is also a crisis of meaning. It’s beautifully ironic that a book called Endings suggests ways to begin again to find meaning and hope in the wonders that remain. This is a book of miracles.” —Thomas Wharton, bestselling author of The Book of Rain and Wolf, Moon, Dog

“Who better to write about extinction than someone who is both a wildlife biologist and a poet. There’s the sadness you’d expect in a narrative of losses but with surprising lightness. And the voice here rises farther and goes deeper than a harrowing lament. It is learned, engaging, warm, outraged, and sometimes funny. Anyone who loves the Earth, who loves good writing, will celebrate Endings. You heard it from me—it will become a Canadian classic.” —Lorna Crozier, author of Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)

“With a dose of gallows humour, a poet’s literary grasp of earth history, and a field biologist’s almanac of trailside stories, Neil Griffin takes nature writing down where it belongs: to the ground of our present moment, where the truth of all we know dances with the grace of all we do not know, despair right next to hope, as life churns again from endings to beginnings.” —Trevor Herriot, author of Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds and The Economy of Sparrows

“Brilliant, funny, and wholly original, this is both a page-turning adventure and a profound meditation on what happens when a clever but reckless ape runs the world. Fans of Annie Dillard and Robert Macfarlane will be delighted.” —Deborah Campbell, author of A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War

“In Endings, Neil Griffin brings tenderness, curiosity, and humour to every encounter. The past is as alive as the present, and the future is not yet fossilized, reminding us that we’re connected in time and space to a diverse world worth defending.” —Kate J. Neville, author of Going to Seed: Essays on Idleness, Nature, and Sustainable Work

“A vivid personal account, compelling in its immediacy, refreshing in its wry humour, inspiring in its confidence that it’s never too late to pay attention to the real world.” —Jan Zwicky, author of Songs for Relinquishing the Earth and Once Upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination

“Enthusiastic, wonderstruck, and enchanted … [Endings] exerts a kind of literary tidal pull: you’re swept up in it, and though you might not know exactly where you’ll end up, you’re happy for the thrilling, illuminating experience.” —British Columbia Review

“Informative, [and] well-written.” —Winnipeg Free Press

Neil Griffin is a writer and naturalist from Calgary, Alberta. Raised on the prairies and trained as a wildlife biologist, for over a decade he tracked the disappearing and the dead of our world, from Canada’s boreal forests to the Amazon basin, from Ethiopia’s Afar desert to the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda, before giving up the glitz and glamour of tropical fieldwork for the financial stability of freelance writing. He holds an MFA from the University of Victoria, where he is an instructor in the Department of Writing.

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