“The problem is that history leaves a slime trail, like a snail.”
Jonathan Miles’s Eradication: A Fable (Doubleday 2026) is next up on my Booker eligible reads. Even before realizing Maria Reva had written one of the blurbs, I was calling it Endling meets Seascraper meets Stone Yard Devotional. Despite some pretty graphic scenes of illegal shark hunting and killing of goats, I really enjoyed this novel and what Miles was doing with his “fable.”
Adi, a former jazz musician turned schoolteacher, answers an ad to “save the world” in an effort to deal the fact his world has crumbled, and he is barely holding on. He didn’t really know what the job would entail, but he didn’t turn it down once he learned. He applied for a five-week assignment on an isolated Pacific Island. His task was to eradicate the thousands of goats that have destroyed the flora and fauna of the island – goats humans placed there decades before that have taken over the island.
Adi has never shot a gun before. He was asked to, but he refused, and now it’s his job. As he struggles with the task at hand, his past reveals itself with heartbreaking details and beautiful moments. (Turning the goat horn into a “clarinet” and playing the lullabies he’d played for his son for the goats? Oh, my heart._ But also, the life on the island reveals itself – life he’s been told isn’t there. Maybe the goats aren’t the problem. The island is littered with trash that has washed up; even the foundation that hired him packs countless plastic bottles for his use and convenience. And then he encounters the shark finners, and the job becomes a lot more dangerous.
Adi has a choice to make, and this time his finger is on the trigger.
I know my Booker “hopefuls” have a tendency to be very “American” heavy, and a part of that is easier access to those works. This is not surprisingly another one that would make my list. It’s weird. It’s funny. It’s quite the brilliant and urgent meditative novel.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 