Conversations with Extinct Animals - by Patrick Lawler (Paperback)

About the Book

In this genre-defying novel, Patrick Lawler crafts a kaleidoscopic dialogue between twenty-four extinct animals and the humans haunted by their absence. Blending eco-fiction, psychological inquiry, and lyrical storytelling, the book unfolds as a surreal therapy session, a love letter, and a suicide note--field notes from the edge of extinction that ask what it means to live, remember, and tell stories in a world unraveling.

Book Synopsis

An experimental narrative by eco-fiction author and poet Patrick Lawler evolves out of the interactions between twenty-four extinct animals and those characters who struggle for significance in the face of their own extinction.

Patrick Lawler's second novel, Conversations with Extinct Animal, is a dialogue between psychology and ecology--between poetry and story. A suicide note masquerading as a love letter, the novel transcends genres and keeps kaleidoscopically shifting: sometimes it is an elegy, and sometimes it is a therapy session--but always these are the field notes for the end of the world.

As a collection of characters associated with The Facility come to terms with an individual's death, they must confront their own losses amid the colossal absence of the twenty-four extinct animals. All the characters float between various inexplicable, mystifying "syndromes" that call into question their identities and, ultimately, call into question the elements of story itself. "Looking at pictures of the Extinct Animals, I can't help but wonder if it is too late to save the world--especially since there are so many different worlds," observes the narrator of the novel in his efforts to save the unsavable.

Review Quotes

"Patrick Lawler's brilliant and timely new novel is Conversation With Extinct Animals, which slyly invites and eludes ideas of what is real. The story is told by an unreliable narrator who admits, "In my dream I am erased." In an oddly humorous twist, the extinct animals are further removed from reality by being sketches in a cryptic place called The Facility. Demonstrating his unique poetic sensibility, and the inclusion of actual poems, Lawler keeps the search for what's real both entertaining and intensely introspective." --Mary McLaughlin Slechta, author of Mulberry Street Stories

"Patrick Lawler's compact book of precise prose (and poetry) fairly bursts with ironies and revelations. The narrator of Conversations with Extinct Animals lives with a few other "characters" in the Facility, which may be a mental institution or may be the world. He looks at the images of extinct animals--toolache wallaby, Socorro dove, et al.--on the walls and contemplates dualities: life/death, reality/dream, truth/lies, etc. What he comes up with is a Pointillist picture of the world as it once was, as it is, and as it may very possibly become."
--Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Safe Colors

About the Author