Extinctions

Frederick Lothian is a retired engineer specialising in concrete who has moved unwillingly into a retirement village after the death of his wife. He has a difficult relationship with his adopted daughter Caroline and an almost non-existent one with his son Callum, who was severely brain-damaged in an accident many years before. There is nothing likeable or sympathetic about Frederick Lothian. He knows that himself. He’s an intelligent man but can’t relate to other people. He’s a damaged man who damages those nearest to him but doesn’t seem to ever be introspective enough to face up to what he has done. Gradually, and with expert pacing, the back story is revealed and if this reader at least found it hard to feel sorry for Fred, understanding more about him at least explains his actions. When Fred reluctantly begins to become friendly with his next door neighbour, the lively and empathetic Janet, there is perhaps a possibility that Fred will find redemption, but maybe it is just too late.
There are some weighty themes addressed in this wonderfully engaging and entertaining novel – death, ageing, grief, loss, family, disability, adoption (Caroline is part of Australia's Stolen Generation, which adds another layer to the story) – but these weighty themes are tackled with a light and sure touch and are expertly blended into the narrative, never becoming tendentious. It’s a dark and disturbing novel, but not without its lighter moments. Fred can unwittingly be very amusing at times. I wasn’t totally convinced by the ending, but overall this is a well-written and intelligent novel, and a real page-turner.

My first thought as I was reading this book was that it was so terribly pleasant to once again be reading a “real” book. The kind of book that your Literature teacher references when bashing into your (perhaps) juvenile skull that “yes you must read this book, and yes you will thank me later”. EXTINCTIONS has so much to offer and yet the action within is not played out upon a grand stage of intrigue and melodrama. It doesn’t need to.

Negotiating with his own intelligent self the myriad of ways in which a new resident must submit to the ebbs and flows of retirement village life, retired concrete engineer Professor Frederick Lothian is a man who once knew his own mind. Very very well. Frederick has, for now, shelved the unpleasant task of self-examining his previous life decisions as even when they were happening, that particular form of navel gazing never seemed to a valuable use of Fredericks’ learned time. Life always somehow did progress forward in its own way without the need for Frederick to pay close and constant attention to the people around him. Frederick’s deceased wife was always the one who managed to keep tabs on the family; all those monotonous and repetitive activities required to be attended to in order to propel a married couple and their two offspring through life. Living alone, Frederick now finds himself with the time to pluck family memories out of mental storage for a quick lookover, and wishes that he was able to unpack the physical leftovers from his previous life in the same fashion. Things are getting a little cramped in his new, smaller, physical space.

Jan, the neighbour, is an affront to Frederick’s sensibilities. The sound of Jan’s pet birds manages to infiltrate Frederick’s walls and from this Frederick makes the sound assumption that this person is not someone he wants to meet. Fate however takes that swiftly out of Frederick’s hands and in dealing with his new and messy reality, the mental walls between past and present experiences are fast dissolving.

So much to unpack in EXTINCTIONS. Author Josephine Wilson writes with such confidence and warmth about this arrogant (yet also insecure) man, that we can’t help but recognize Frederick’s struggles as struggles of worth. Everyone faces them eventually and for Frederick, the kicking once again into engaged living is sharp, immensely painful and not at all foreseen. Life is supposed to wind down at this later stage, not present so much for a elderly person to process. You will need to mosey your way into feeling affection for Frederick. He is who he is, and views the world from the lense of a former academic who as stereotype would dictate, does not suffer fools easily.

EXTINCTIONS is an intelligent and very accessible work of fiction. The novel’s supposedly humble setting is actually, for anyone who has ever dealt with placing a family member in a retirement facility or has experience of living in one themselves, anything but humble and unassuming. Life on a micro scale, as can often newly be when busy people find themselves taken out of their larger and more professional environments, becomes overwhelming for its lack of stimulation and its focus on what is frankly was once never that interesting. But by necessity, it does become so.

EXTINCTIONS was the winner of the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

(EXTINCTIONS is also another reminder why every single serious reader out there needs their own Eames reproduction. Readers need furniture (equipment really) that is up to consistent solid use).

I must admit that how the book would eventually develop I did not foresee after reading the first initial pages. The book central character is a retired academic engineer called Fred Lothian who is living in a retired village in Perth Western Australia. He is living a deliberately solitary life and is consumed by regrets at the life he has chosen and by the consequences of his past actions. His failure to confront the past which he must ultimately do to achieve some semblance of peace and self awareness is characterised by surrounding himself with clutter and the detritus of his former life that he is unable to discard. When Jan a friendly and loquacious neighbour unexpectedly enters the scene Fred must reassess and confront the secrets, half truths and lies that have consumed his previous life.

This is a story of redemption and coming to terms with the past and the extinction referred to in the title relates to the personal as well as the natural. I liked the way the narrative developed as like peeling an onion we gradually got to learn little by little the true events that shaped and perhaps in some ways traumatised Fred's life and accounted for his subsequent actions.

The interesting photographs and drawings that accompanied the text lead us to question the meaning of what extinction is and whether we are heading or retreating from this. The full range of emotions from humour to despair are encountered here and the book is beautifully written leaving the reader to question the meaning of existence. It is also an indictment of our treatment of lost cultures and nature and the consequences for members of Australia's Stolen Generations as personified by the character of Caroline.

Sometimes light and sometimes dark this is a novel that will stay in the mind for some time and the ending leaves many questions unanswered which perhaps due to the underlying subject matter is how it should be. I believe this is well worth a read and lends itself for much discussion for a book group.