A scientist and her two very charming adolescent daughters begin a journey in Siberia in the hopes of creating a prehistoric mammoth which will save the planet. It ends in Italy with a baby mammoth walking into the woods. Complicated relationships. The worst part of the book was the fact that so much of the science had changed but women roles remained the same. ( )

A mixed bag of a book. This book is about but is not enough about mammoths, cutting edge science, feminism, or women in science. Instead, this book centers on extinctions, broadly defined: megafauna extinction, prehistoric humanoid extinction, personal extinction, familial extinction, and possibly the biggest one of all, the very real possibility of global extinction through climate change. It's a weighty theme and the author is at their best at moments when the characters realize that despite their hopes and wishes, extinction is permanent. There's no coming back from it, which generates the grief that permeates the novel.

Greater character development was needed. We never have a sense of what's really driving the characters apart from grief. Grief is powerful, but it's not enough to explain many of their choices. There's a lack of depth to relationship between the father and daughters, as if they never really knew each other, so it's hard to understand why they're so overwhelmed with grief. We also don't have any other real information about Jane other than that she's a grieving widow and having a hard time parenting teenagers as a single mother. There's also not quite enough action or unexpected developments to sustain the readers' interest and certain plot points that could have given the novel a push are never explored. (Why does Jane never refer to The Professor by name? Are the British couple really the villains? They never really feel that sinister, just odd.) At one point, literally all of the main characters are just hanging out on an Italian estate doing nothing waiting for something to happen but it's never quite clear what they're waiting for. It would not have been hard to add some suspense and action to this novel, which I regret to say ended about the way I expected. I love the idea and exploring the theme of extinction, but this wasn't the book I was hoping for. ( )

A story about a single mother with her two teenage daughters as they struggle against the sexism in the scientific community, and bring a wooly mammoth baby into existence. This is easy to get through and enjoyable, but I need the characters to have more distinct voices. I'd be caught in a page of dialog and have to check who said what between the mother and daughters multiple times. This is also strange in that while something very earth-shaking happens, bringing back an extinct species! No one know about it? and so nothing actually happens in the end. The focus is much more on the relationships between the mother and daughters and their grief over losing their husband/father. ( )

Eve and Vera, the teenage protagonists of Ramona Ausubel’s The Last Animal like to tell each other fantastical stories as a way to ground themselves in the crazy life they live traveling around the world at the whim of their scientist parents. When their father dies, their mother, Jane, forced to continue their hectic existence in pursuit of finishing her Ph.D., takes them to Siberia for the summer. When they stumble upon a baby woolly mammoth, they have no idea how it will change all of their lives. The Last Animal defies genre-fication as it is a feminist, environmental, coming-of-age story about parenthood, grief, and finding yourself at 15 and 40. I highly recommend this book to readers of Lydia Millet, Emma Straub, and others looking for something different about women and family. ( )