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Eradication: a moving story of goats, grief and what it means to play God

Not yet published
Expected 5 Feb 26
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'Beautifully weird, eerie, unexpected - a story for our times' Kevin Barry
'A work of genius. Eradication is a beautiful and devastating novel' Luke Kennard
'A deft, unsettling exploration of what it means to play God' Maria Reva

A moving fable in which a grieving man, confronts a broken world on an island overpopulated by goats.

Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician-turned-schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora and reckon with its invasive population of goats that's sent the ecological balance severely out of whack..

What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren't exactly what his employers said they were - and, complicating things further, he discovers he's not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora, and, by extension, to the world it occupies - and the desperate steps he must take to eradicate it.

Eradication is an utterly unforgettable reading experience and the work of a truly singular imagination.

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Expected publication February 10, 2026

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About the author

Jonathan Miles

5 books152 followers
JONATHAN MILES is the author of the novels Dear American Airlines and Want Not, both New York Times Notable books, and the novel Anatomy of a Miracle: The True* Story of a Paralyzed Veteran, a Mississippi Convenience Store, a Vatican Investigation, and the Spectacular Perils of Grace, which was a featured selection for the American Library Association’s Book Club Central and is currently in development as a feature film.

Dear American Airlines was named a Best Book of 2008 by the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Amazon.com, and others. It was also a finalist for the QPB New Voices Award, the Borders Original Voices Award, and the Great Lakes Book Award, and has been translated into six languages.

Want Not was named a best book of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, bookish.com, bookriot.com, and litReactor.com, and was a finalist for the 2014 Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Award in Fiction.

He is a former columnist for the New York Times and has been a contributing editor to a wide range of national magazines including Garden & Gun, where he has served as Books columnist since 2012. His journalism has been included numerous times in the annual Best American Crime Writing and Best American Sports writing anthologies, including his account of competing in the 2005 Dakar Rally, a 5,500-mile race through north Africa.

In 2024 he toured as a multi-instrumentalist in the band of the Grammy-winning artist Jon Batiste. He currently serves as Writer-in-Residence at the Solebury School in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
Profile Image for Kate O'Shea.
1,342 reviews197 followers
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
December 11, 2025
Adi has lot everything. His son is dead and his wife has left him. He needs something so when a job opportunity to "save the world" arises, he sees his chance for some redemption.

He is deposited on the goat-infested Island of Santa Flora with enough provisions to survive and enough ammunition to save the island's rare flora and fauna from the non-indigenous, hungry goats who have demolished so much of the island's resources.

However Adi has not reckoned with having to actually find and kill the goats or the fishermen who are doing their own bit for denuding the ocean.

Eradication is a beautifully crafted short novel about one man's struggle to come to terms with what his life has become and who he really is.

Great writing and a surprising story. I did get a bit frustrated with Adi at times but he is a likeable character. I would highly recommend this short read.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the advance review copy.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
4,192 reviews3,454 followers
December 16, 2025
My early Shelf Awareness review: Who wouldn't take a job that involves "saving the world"? Adi, the antihero of Jonathan Miles's powerful fourth novel, is drawn to the job listing not just for the noble mission but also for the chance to be alone for five weeks on a Pacific island. A teacher reeling from his 11-year-old son Jairo's death and his wife leaving, Adi relishes getting away from it all. But he hasn't reckoned with the emotional challenge of eradicating an invasive species--and facing up to humanity's role in environmental crises.

Santa Flora once teemed with endemic birds and reptiles, but many species have gone extinct because of the ballooning population of goats. Whalers left a few on the island as food supplies to retrieve on the way back from expeditions, but the numbers have gotten out of hand since. The goats strip the cliffs of flora and compete with native fauna for habitat. A flashback to Adi's cursory interview reveals that he was completely unqualified, having never fired a gun, but the mysterious "foundation" was so desperate it hired him anyway. Armed with a sniper's rifle, his task is to kill all of the island's estimated 2,000 to 4,000 goats.

From the start, it's clear Adi's not cut out for this. The story nears the midpoint when he finally kills his first goat. He butchers it, but cries while eating the meat. In the meantime, he's made the mistake of becoming emotionally attached to the female goats hanging around his hut. He's identified individuals and named them; how can he kill them? As the likelihood of success plummets, he chooses a new tactic: slaughter all the males to halt reproduction.

Miles spins a taut parable reminiscent of T.C. Boyle's When the Killing's Done. The setting is imprecise and the backstory sparse, as befits a fable. Adi's relationship with his son and jazz clarinet hobby are resonant. His island discoveries enhance a nuanced environmentalist message: a trash-covered beach; an injured bird thought to be extinct--embodying why the goats can't coexist with endangered species; and two drunken fishermen who illegally kill sharks and sell the fins to China. Guilt and blame, responsibility and revenge, trade off in this troubling novella. Attempts at rectification keep backfiring. Human tragedies, like Jairo's accidental death, may be random. Those that befall the natural world, though--whether intentional or not--can only be laid at humanity's door.

(Posted with permission from Shelf Awareness.) (3.5)
Profile Image for | Emily’s Goodie Reads |.
255 reviews16 followers
October 11, 2025
By far the best ARC I’ve read to date, this book felt like finding a small, unexpected slice of perfection. Eradication: A Fable is a mesmerizing exploration of isolation, nature, morality, and the tangled ways our past mistakes shape us. This was my first experience reading Jonathan Miles, and I can confidently say I’ll be a repeater. His prose is absolutely spellbinding: lush, reflective, and razor-sharp in its observations of both humanity and the natural world.

The story carries the introspective solitude of The Wall and the eerie, windswept atmosphere of Wild Dark Shore. Through Adi, we’re invited into a deeply personal, almost spiritual journey of reckoning and renewal. His decision to isolate himself on an island raises haunting questions: Did he come here for the good of the island, or for himself? Does his understanding of life, guilt, and purpose evolve by the end? I found myself rooting for him the entire way, drawn into the beauty and unease of his surroundings and the fragile life of the island’s goats that come to symbolize so much more.

This book was also incredibly unique and kept me wanting more with every chapter. I loved the vivid idea of thousands of goats roaming the island—both haunting and strangely beautiful. At first, it seems simple: remove what’s invasive. But as Adi names and knows these creatures, the lines blur. Who truly belongs? Do humans ever bring balance to nature, or only harm? Can we change?

This novel made me pause and look inward, challenging my own beliefs about goodness, forgiveness, and the quiet ways we can make peace with the past. Eradication: A Fable is timely, profound, and achingly human—a story that reminds us to stand firm in what’s right, to listen to the earth, and to always try to do better.

A stunning and unforgettable read I’ll be recommending to absolutely everyone!


Huge thanks to @NetGalley and the publisher for letting me discover this beautiful, thought-provoking story early—it was truly a gift to read. I can’t wait to talk about this more after publishing date of 2.10.26!
Profile Image for Rick B Buttafogo.
254 reviews6 followers
November 11, 2025
READ. THIS. BOOK!! it’s a short novel of only 158 pages but such a great story. While it is built around “goats”that need to be removed from an island because they are destroying nature there, it is truly only a personification of what has happened in Adi’s life. Adi takes a 5 week job on an island called Santa Flora. His mission is to remove the goats that someone brought to the island but have over populated the island and it’s leading to its destruction. What happens when Adi gets there is the heart of this story. Magnificent. Trust me when I say it will open your eyes. 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Profile Image for Peter Albertelli.
45 reviews5 followers
October 2, 2025
Give me a second to formulate a review. I’m still thinking about this book, it’s haunting me…IN A GOOD WAY! Adi’s backstory unfolds throughout the course of the book, which leads to a “BANG” of an ending.
Profile Image for Emma.
218 reviews158 followers
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
January 18, 2026
A random little book.

Eradication follows Adi who takes up a job on a remote Central Pacific island which has been overrun by goats. His job is to spend five weeks killing as many of them as he can, so that the wildlife there on the brink of extinction, can flourish again. But Adi has never shot a gun before, and it's soon clear he took up this job after suffering a terrible personal tragedy - the death of his son. Haunted by his memories, he also begins to suspect that the goats aren't the problem after all, which is just as well because he's clearly not built for killing.

This has already received rave reviews from many readers so I am clearly in a slight minority here, but I just wanted a bit more from Eradication. The humour was welcome but the writing was a little plain for me and the flashbacks were underwhelming, not really doing much to build Adi's character.

It's an easy, fine read, just not one that is going to make my top books of the year. I will say if you don't like books that feature animal cruelty, don't read this. I found some scenes very upsetting! Cracking ending though.
Profile Image for Liz Hein.
490 reviews395 followers
January 14, 2026
4.5 stars ⭐️ haunting and deceptively layered; I’ll be thinking about this fable, and it’s many possible iterations, for a while.
Profile Image for Robert Goodman.
559 reviews16 followers
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
December 28, 2025
A man takes on a job to try and manage his grief in Jonathan Miles short but powerful new novel Eradication. Eradication is more than this though. It is a meditation on the environment, the impact of people and what we can or are able to do in the face of environmental catastrophe.
When Eradication opens, Adi is being taken by two sailors out to a small island called Santa Flora. The sailors, one of whom is still drunk from the night before, tease him - calling him Mister Killer. when they arrive at the island, where Adi is to spend the next five months they unload a bunch of guns. It turns out that Adi has been employed by an environmental foundation to kill the feral goats of Santa Flora. The goats had been introduced over a hundred years ago by whalers who wanted an easy source of food and in the years since have decimated the island’s natural habitat and species. Adi’s job is to kill all of the goats (there are over 2000) to help bring the island back into balance. Only it emerges very quickly that Adi has never actually fired a gun before and is not, by any definition, a killer.
As already noted Eradication is an environmental fable. Miles considers the damage wrought by human interference and the fortitude and belief it might take to reverse this damage. On the flip side of this, Adi encounters a pair of fishermen who have no qualms about killing or environmental destruction, being involved in the illegal shark fin trade. But Miles also tunes readers into Adi’s personal pain, and how his own past has both driven him to this point but also shapes the way he approaches (or fails to approach) the task that he has taken on.
In an age where everything we do seems to contribute to the degradation of the environment and few know quite where to start in order to address all of the problems that we have caused, Miles gives readers a way to think about living in harmony with the world that we have created. It is not necessarily comfortable and there are no easy answers. And the whole inexorably builds to a disturbing answer in a climax that is both shocking and strangely cathartic.
Profile Image for TBS.
132 reviews
November 21, 2025
This short novel attacks like a bird of prey and carries you off in a story so insular that you will doubt your return from this fevered, morally hot-wired landscape. Santa Flora is the rocky remote island setting inhabited and overrun by thousands of non-native goats, which for years have been devastating the island’s bird habitat and greenery to the point where a philanthropic foundation has decided to intervene. The solution is to send someone with a high-powered rifle and ammunition and supplies for 5 weeks to kill all the goats, and thus restore the ecological balance. The “someone” is Adi, a former 4th grade teacher and musician, who is severed from his life. The reasons for this unfold during the craggy heart-stopping trail of the narrative, as Abi hunts or tries to hunt goats with past tragedies, secrets, and failures as his cerebral companions. And then there are his actual companions, like a wounded bird declared extinct, a rat named Oliver, a goat he should not befriend, and some very dangerous human fisherman. Threading it all together are questions and musings about the moral imperative of killing, killing for the greater good, what the greater good actually is, and how we remove ourselves from the violence underpinning our daily meals. How Miles manages all these weighty themes with insight and often incredible humor is a minor miracle. The ending is a knockout and made me want to immediately start reading the book over again. This small book is a stunner.
Profile Image for Jitske.
2 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
January 11, 2026
What if you decide to leave your former life behind and agree to travel to the island Santa Flora to eradicate its non-indigenous population of goats - or as Miles calls them "cancer cells that bleat"? That is the task Adi agrees to in the fable 'Eradication'. Adi's life is scarred by loss and the escape to the island is his search for new meaning and purpose.
As a reader you join Adi's exploration of the island and discover what humans have caused and often times forgotten about. And when confronted with the environmental destruction, what do you do about it?

To begin with this novel is not easily put in one box. It combines an eariness one minute with incredible humour the next. Throughout Miles uses wonderfully lyrical language. As a non-native English speaker I had to look up quite a few words, but that did not take away from the enjoyment of the writing. The original ways in which Miles describes nature and emotions I found very impressing.

This is a novel you can read in different ways; just take the story at face value or ponder about the deeper meaning of 'Eradication'. A few days after finishing the book I'm still pondering. To me that is the sign of a well constructed story.

I absolutely recommend 'Eradication' for its lyricality, humour and uneasiness it conveys.

Thank you to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for my honest review.

61 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
December 19, 2025
An extraordinary story about the effect of humans upsetting the natural flora and fauna by introducing a non-indigenous species into an area, namely goats.

The way the authorities have decided to address this is to eradicate the goats and they recruit Adi to go to the island to sort out the problem. I love the humour at the beginning of the book and the description of the island and the goats. Things become darker as we learn that Adi has suffered tragedy in his life that he is coming to terms with and his thoughts as he realises the consequences of this task he has undertaken. I wasn’t expecting the ending that came, but in a way it was inevitable. It leaves you with much food for thought!

Beautifully written with an excellent storyline. A fascinating and absorbing read.

Many thanks to Jonathan Miles, Quercus and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an early copy
Profile Image for Allison Kelly.
25 reviews2 followers
January 16, 2026
I absolutely loved Eradication. Our narrator is recently divorced (after his son died) and signs up for a 5 week stint to eradicate the population of goats on an island. Without having ever shot a gun before in his life, hilarity and self understanding ensues while he tries to come to terms with his son’s death and perform his job.

The writing was incredible. The tender moments were so well written and real. The funny parts had me laughing out loud. The way he anthropomorphizes the goats and the choices he makes as a result are so creative.

I highly recommend this allegorical novel and am planning to reread it soon! Thank you to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for the eARC!

Profile Image for Polly Jenefer.
9 reviews
November 21, 2025
Great read!
I'm not sure I was meant to find this as funny as I did, given the heavy subject matter. However, between the descriptions of goats and Adi's inner monologue, I was chuckling throughout.
If you enjoy obscure tales that explore solitude, nature, and morality, please read this. You won't be disappointed.
Thank you NetGalley and Quercus Books for allowing me to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for Debbie.
473 reviews16 followers
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
December 16, 2025
A short fable and interesting read. It seems simple narrative at first and I enjoyed where the book went as it twists and turned. Thank you to the author. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.
Profile Image for Jamie Madsen.
11 reviews
October 30, 2025
Brilliantly written, remarkably human, and entirely engrossing — read this book (thank me later!).
3,701 reviews17 followers
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
December 22, 2025
fantastic and well-done short book with amazing tension buildup to a very dramatic ending of the book. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.
Profile Image for Chris.
615 reviews186 followers
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
December 31, 2025
3,5
A book about nature and ecology, life and death, but too short maybe to make a lasting impression. I loved the ending though!
Thank you Penguin Random House and Edelweiss for the ARC.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews

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