Review of Field Notes from an Extinction by Eoghan Walls

Walls uses a journal structure to draw the reader into a singular story I can't stop thinking about. In Field Notes from an Extinction, we witness the innermost thoughts of a grumbly hermit ornithologist who is thrust into a parenting role, then must face a pirate queen out for revenge on British colonial rulers amid the Irish Potato Famine.

Eoghan Wells's Field Notes from an Extinction is a novel told in journal form from the perspective of a stodgy, single-minded 19th-century ornithologist.

Ignatius Green is sent by the Royal Society to the remote Irish island of Tor Mor to study some of the last Great Auks left in the world. Meanwhile the potato famine ravages the mainland Irish population and all order seems lost. A trickle-down effect begins to break down the strict systems Ig has imposed upon his wild surroundings.

When the ruffian local suppliers row over not only his (rifled-through, partially stolen) supplies but also a small, feral child (he eventually learns that her name is Bridget), all hope seems to be lost of continuing his seemingly doomed mission of observation, documentation, and providing an orderly report of the endangered birds.

Add to the complicated situation that Bridget's mother is said by the untrustworthy rowboat operators to be the most dangerous, fabled, infamous pirate in the land, Grace O'Malley. Grace is rumored to be carrying out renegade justice on the British officers kicking Irish tenant families out of their homes during the Irish Potato Famine, leaving the people to starve. Her formidable, fearsome presence looms from afar, and Ig dreads the possibility that she might come to fetch the child she has mystifyingly sent his way.

I was drawn into Ig's insular world and his heartbreaking dedication and singleminded focus on the tragic Auks. He holds prejudices against the Irish, and he is unaware of his closemindedness and assumptions. The journal structure of the novel allows us to witness all of his grumbly nitpicking, his large-scale fears and concerns, his existence on a knife-edge, dependent on his primitive, remote systems and self-discipline--and his altered perspective after the upsetting, upheaving, destructive, horrifying, wondrous arrival of the child.

Soon everything shifts, and we see the sea change within Ig, with the Auks themselves, with young Bridget, and in the world surrounding their spare, strange, isolated island.

I was fully intrigued by the story and by Ig's vivid point of view, the relentless and increasingly outrageous interruptions to his status quo, and the building power of change, leading to the eventual complete destruction of his prior life.

I was so delighted by the tone, the structure, and the unexpected evolution within Field Notes from an Extinction. I can't stop thinking about this book.

I received this title as part of my Books Are Magic monthly book subscription.

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Eoghan Walls is a Northern Irish poet who is also the author of The Gospel of Orla.

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