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Field Notes From an Extinction
Fast-paced and funny. Scientific and tender. A literary thriller featuring Auks. As if Hilary Mantel’s The Giant, O’Brien met Robinson Crusoe, here is a story of one man’s growing humanity amidst famine and extinction.
Told in the vernacular of the day, this novel-as-notebook features a 19th-century ornithologist on a remote Irish island—from the author of indie favorite The Gospel of Orla.
Written in the form of a 19th-century notebook of ornithological observations, Field Notes from an Extinction follows the life and work of one Ignatius Green, a fictitious English scientist dispatched by the Royal Society to the remote island of Tor Mor off the northern Irish coast. Green, a widower, is single-minded and self-righteous, brilliant and bumbling. He is determined to set the scientific record straight on the mating rituals, feeding and care of hatchlings,
and other minutiae he can gather about the Great Auk (pinguinus impennis).
Green’s world is shattered when his monthly goods delivery arrives ravaged by the local Irish townsmen. His fury at their impertinence is matched only by his dismay at finding a small child amid the shipment--dirty, abandoned, mute, and utterly feral and unmanageable. Worse, the locals are growing restless and hungry. And there is talk sweeping the land of a terrifying woman with unnatural power.
Green fights for his survival against brigands and hunger and, most fearsome, the resolve of a fierce and angry child. And, perhaps, for a wider understanding of family amidst roiling societal unrest.
Told in the vernacular of the day, this novel-as-notebook features a 19th-century ornithologist on a remote Irish island—from the author of indie favorite The Gospel of Orla.
Written in the form of a 19th-century notebook of ornithological observations, Field Notes from an Extinction follows the life and work of one Ignatius Green, a fictitious English scientist dispatched by the Royal Society to the remote island of Tor Mor off the northern Irish coast. Green, a widower, is single-minded and self-righteous, brilliant and bumbling. He is determined to set the scientific record straight on the mating rituals, feeding and care of hatchlings,
and other minutiae he can gather about the Great Auk (pinguinus impennis).
Green’s world is shattered when his monthly goods delivery arrives ravaged by the local Irish townsmen. His fury at their impertinence is matched only by his dismay at finding a small child amid the shipment--dirty, abandoned, mute, and utterly feral and unmanageable. Worse, the locals are growing restless and hungry. And there is talk sweeping the land of a terrifying woman with unnatural power.
Green fights for his survival against brigands and hunger and, most fearsome, the resolve of a fierce and angry child. And, perhaps, for a wider understanding of family amidst roiling societal unrest.
288 pages, Paperback
Published March 3, 2026
About the author
Eoghan Walls
5 books50 followersDerry poet, writer, lecturer at Lancaster, father of battalions of daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews
March 17, 2026
The Great Auk is having something of a moment in world literature. It became extinct in the mid-19th century and I had never heard of this beautiful bird until last year, when it first showed up in a brilliant short story by Ben Shattuck ('History of Sound') and then played a supporting role in 'Beasts of the Sea' (Iida Turpeinen). I also have Sylvie Grimbert's The Last of Its Kind on my shelf.
Eoghan Walls's novel is set on an isolated Irish island where the British researcher Ignatius Green studies the last breeding colony of the Great Auk (or garefowl). On the mainland, the Great Famine is raging, but Green is oblivious about this.
Then one day, when his supplies are delivered, he discovers that bizarrely one of the crates contains a little girl - for him to take care of. Where did the girl come from, who sent her and what do the murders of various bailiffs have to do with it?
An intriguing premise and a beautifully written novel, in the style of Carys Davies 'Clear' and Audrey Magee's 'The Colony'. And for once, maybe the Englishman isn't so bad after all...
Wholeheartedly recommended!
Eoghan Walls's novel is set on an isolated Irish island where the British researcher Ignatius Green studies the last breeding colony of the Great Auk (or garefowl). On the mainland, the Great Famine is raging, but Green is oblivious about this.
Then one day, when his supplies are delivered, he discovers that bizarrely one of the crates contains a little girl - for him to take care of. Where did the girl come from, who sent her and what do the murders of various bailiffs have to do with it?
An intriguing premise and a beautifully written novel, in the style of Carys Davies 'Clear' and Audrey Magee's 'The Colony'. And for once, maybe the Englishman isn't so bad after all...
Wholeheartedly recommended!
March 19, 2026
Ah, my favorite trope, the antisocial weirdo who gets suddenly thrust into a parenting role. Also, the disgruntled British commoners really brought their Disgruntled British Commoner A-Game. Kudos.
February 27, 2026
An English ornithologist is living on a remote island off the coast of Northern Ireland in 1847 to study birds. One day, his regular supply runner drops off provisions, including a large basket that conceals a mute, feral child on the brink of death. She survives, but his life is forever changed.
This charming novel is the ornithologist's diary, notebook, and sketchbook entries. It is at times very funny, terribly sad, and shockingly cruel. It takes place during the height of the Irish potato famine, which the Englishman sees as not his problem...until it is. The audiobook's narration is excellent. I enjoyed the scientist's approach to the unexpected, and the milestones he recorded as he and the child learned to communicate. I would have liked a more specific ending imagined for them. 4.6 rounded up for this unique and absorbing novel.
My thanks to the author, publisher, @TantorAudio, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #FieldNotesFromanExtinction for review purposes. Publication date: 3 March 2026.
This charming novel is the ornithologist's diary, notebook, and sketchbook entries. It is at times very funny, terribly sad, and shockingly cruel. It takes place during the height of the Irish potato famine, which the Englishman sees as not his problem...until it is. The audiobook's narration is excellent. I enjoyed the scientist's approach to the unexpected, and the milestones he recorded as he and the child learned to communicate. I would have liked a more specific ending imagined for them. 4.6 rounded up for this unique and absorbing novel.
My thanks to the author, publisher, @TantorAudio, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #FieldNotesFromanExtinction for review purposes. Publication date: 3 March 2026.
March 15, 2026
This was one of the those books that fit in very neatly everything that I love in a book. It is written mostly as a journal (a favorite) and fast paced. Taking place in Ireland in the 1840's and during an extinction event, you get the sense that it's the end of the world. Ig starts the book as a nature-loving scientist on a mission to document the Auks and ends up just a man trying to survive the wilderness and then the landscape of 1840's Ireland, all the while protecting the spirited Bridget. Definitely worth your time.
March 22, 2026
We all want to be the particular, self-absorbed Englishman Ignatius sometimes, setting to our own whimsies, doing what we want, uninterrupted by social expectations, and investing ourselves wholly in what we deem important. For Ignatius, it is the study of the last colony of Great Auk (“garefowl”), as he records in his field notebook the minute details of eight Shakespearean-named birds who themselves become minor characters in the book. “To the birds!”
But life is a series of interruptions, unexpected circumstances, and at the hands of a greater force of nature. Ig did not plan for the Irish Potato Famine and the unraveling of civilization. Nor did he prepare to take responsibility (which he does - tepidly at first) and care for a child. How can fate be asking him to give up what he thought he most desired?
I thoroughly enjoyed Eoghan Walls’ Field Notes from an Extinction. It is refreshingly different and asks the reader to see a little of themselves in Ignatius: striving to pursue excellence and professional respect while investing ourselves authentically in our relationships and taking stock of the greater world. Part ornithologist field notes, part journal, scraps of dialogue, and inserted news articles, I thought the genre-blending was clever and natural. If I am still thinking about a book and the questions it poses long after I finish it, then it was a good read.
But life is a series of interruptions, unexpected circumstances, and at the hands of a greater force of nature. Ig did not plan for the Irish Potato Famine and the unraveling of civilization. Nor did he prepare to take responsibility (which he does - tepidly at first) and care for a child. How can fate be asking him to give up what he thought he most desired?
I thoroughly enjoyed Eoghan Walls’ Field Notes from an Extinction. It is refreshingly different and asks the reader to see a little of themselves in Ignatius: striving to pursue excellence and professional respect while investing ourselves authentically in our relationships and taking stock of the greater world. Part ornithologist field notes, part journal, scraps of dialogue, and inserted news articles, I thought the genre-blending was clever and natural. If I am still thinking about a book and the questions it poses long after I finish it, then it was a good read.
June 18, 2026
4.5 stars. Really interesting commentary on family, morality, prejudice, and oppression. Written by an Irishman but following an Englishman during the Irish famine, Field Notes From an Extinction contains so many interesting English-Irish interactions. Our protagonist, Ig, drips with condescension and loathing for the Irish, famine and poverty be damned. He also finds himself thrust into a single father role, much to his dismay. A classic “grumpy parent learns to love their adopted child” trope, but it pays off immensely. This novel provides (what I imagine) is a look into the oppression and subjugation the Irish suffered at the hands of the English for many years. It’s also just a great story! It’s funny and charming and heartwarming and heart wrenching and has little illustrations of birds :) De Stiil strikes again
April 8, 2026
Extraordinary. Lyrical, heartbreaking.
April 30, 2026
Other reviewers have pointed out that the Great Auk and it's surprising extinction has now been prevalent in several recent historical/literary fiction books and while this book seems to be centering them more than those books do, Field Notes from an Extinction manages to be a much weirder and wilder book and is all the better for it. Our main man Ignatius is a naturalist sent by a lordly Brit to the coast of Ireland to study (and collect) Auks. Almost entirely self-(and bird)-absorbed, Ignatius seems incapable of recognizing the import of any social situation he finds himself in, or that these pesky Irish might have more to them than his essential Britishness allows him to believe. When a child is delivered to his shores with his provisions, Ig must adapt to a parental role without a common language. To reveal more would be to disservice the book, but so many odd but wonderful scenes play out over the rest of the book and the Auks become a distant memory (much like the actual Auks). A delightfully unhinged update on the naturalist novel.
June 26, 2026
LOVED the bulk of it but that ending...
February 28, 2026
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC copy of the audiobook version.
I enjoyed the historical fiction with a scientist twist. The audiobook was well done, but I think I would have enjoyed this story more in written form where it’s written notebook style. But overall, it was entertaining and worth the read.
I enjoyed the historical fiction with a scientist twist. The audiobook was well done, but I think I would have enjoyed this story more in written form where it’s written notebook style. But overall, it was entertaining and worth the read.
April 29, 2026
what a uniquely interesting read — 4.5 stars rounded up
Did Not Finish
June 17, 2026I did it, I found a book that was too weird and Irish for me. Didn’t think it was possible. This is a book for another time when I have more comprehensive capacity
May 19, 2026
A very odd, bizarre, and unusual novel written in the form of a notebook, it follows Ignatius Green, an arrogant English ornithologist who is dispatched to stay on a remote island off the coast of Ireland to study the last surviving colony of Great Auks.
This is a type of bird that kind of resembles penguins and are very quick when they are in the ocean, but they were extremely slow on land which is why they were slaughtered into Extinction so quickly, especially during the Great Potato famine in Ireland which killed so many people due to starvation and disease.
Historical fact, the last breeding pair of great auks, a male and a female were sitting on the very last egg known to exist and some filthy Wankers came along and wrung the necks of the breeding pair and in their haste to take the bodies, they smashed the last known egg and there you have it ladies and gentlemen, the Extinction of this species because of MAN. And so it continues every single damn day on this planet.
Anywho, Ignatius is on this island for research and has supplies delivered to him and unbeknownst to him, not only do a lot of his supplies not show up as they are pilfered by people who are starving on the opposite shores, but a young feral girl is delivered to him as well. This young girl who I believe is Gaelic, her mother is rumored in these highly superstitious communities to be a witch with incredible Powers. You do get to meet her mother later in the book and she is really something to behold. I wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley, she is indeed a very intelligent woman but a very vengeful one. She was doing what she has to do to avenge something that had happened to her. Long story short, this was a very interesting novel both in the way that it was written and all of the characters that you meet along the way. It is a very wry and poignant historical novel. And even though it is set during the Great famine and deals with oppression, starvation, and death, the ending leaves you with a little bit of hope. It was a very interesting read.
This is a type of bird that kind of resembles penguins and are very quick when they are in the ocean, but they were extremely slow on land which is why they were slaughtered into Extinction so quickly, especially during the Great Potato famine in Ireland which killed so many people due to starvation and disease.
Historical fact, the last breeding pair of great auks, a male and a female were sitting on the very last egg known to exist and some filthy Wankers came along and wrung the necks of the breeding pair and in their haste to take the bodies, they smashed the last known egg and there you have it ladies and gentlemen, the Extinction of this species because of MAN. And so it continues every single damn day on this planet.
Anywho, Ignatius is on this island for research and has supplies delivered to him and unbeknownst to him, not only do a lot of his supplies not show up as they are pilfered by people who are starving on the opposite shores, but a young feral girl is delivered to him as well. This young girl who I believe is Gaelic, her mother is rumored in these highly superstitious communities to be a witch with incredible Powers. You do get to meet her mother later in the book and she is really something to behold. I wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley, she is indeed a very intelligent woman but a very vengeful one. She was doing what she has to do to avenge something that had happened to her. Long story short, this was a very interesting novel both in the way that it was written and all of the characters that you meet along the way. It is a very wry and poignant historical novel. And even though it is set during the Great famine and deals with oppression, starvation, and death, the ending leaves you with a little bit of hope. It was a very interesting read.
June 20, 2026
I adored Field Notes From an Extinction and didn't want it to end. Funny, suspenseful, and ferociously humane, it hit me even harder than his debut novel, The Gospel of Orla, although it's difficult to compare the two, never mind that they were written by the same author, in what would appear to be a relatively short span of time. Stylistically and tonally, Field Notes reminds me a little of Robinson Crusoe, Huck Finn, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Pale Fire, although it isn't derivative in any way, and you will likely draw from your own stock of literary predecessors. Walls is a master of voice, and his narrators are singular. They don't sound like each other, like Walls, or like anyone but themselves: actual human beings with actual thoughts and independent interior lives that are suddenly somehow transparent and made available to you, the reader.
The narrator of Field Notes, a 19th-century English ornithologist named Ignatius Green, could not be more different from Orla, the tough and traumatized teenage heroine of the previous novel. Even so, he was intimately and fully present for me starting from the first few pages. It felt like a privilege to witness him evolve from insufferable prig to hapless buffoon to stoic nerd to someone I would not hesitate to embrace as a hero.
Any hack can make you hate our hateful species. It takes real talent to compel love. And I loved Ignatius and the barbarous child in his care; I loved the child's wild pirate mother; I loved every auk that he documented, observed, cherished, and mourned. Some of the events from this novel feel as real to me as if I had experienced them myself. If you're sick of the toxic self-regard that passes for profundity in so many contemporary novels, let Walls dispense the balm.
The narrator of Field Notes, a 19th-century English ornithologist named Ignatius Green, could not be more different from Orla, the tough and traumatized teenage heroine of the previous novel. Even so, he was intimately and fully present for me starting from the first few pages. It felt like a privilege to witness him evolve from insufferable prig to hapless buffoon to stoic nerd to someone I would not hesitate to embrace as a hero.
Any hack can make you hate our hateful species. It takes real talent to compel love. And I loved Ignatius and the barbarous child in his care; I loved the child's wild pirate mother; I loved every auk that he documented, observed, cherished, and mourned. Some of the events from this novel feel as real to me as if I had experienced them myself. If you're sick of the toxic self-regard that passes for profundity in so many contemporary novels, let Walls dispense the balm.
August 7, 2026
75%
Usually when you read a book, you can tell early on what the point of it is: whether it is to make you feel a certain feeling, or to consider a certain subject. I fear this book was a bit unclear as to what it wanted from me. The beginning and middle were solid, but the ending lost the plot a bit. For the majority of the story, the Irish famine (aka the Irish genocide at the hands of the British Empire) was mostly on the periphery, a constant known but not the main point, as the focus is on our ornithologist and mysterious child-ward - their interactions and growing relationship. Suddenly, towards the end, the famine becomes the main point, and our characters are utterly side-lined. Don't get me wrong, it's written very well; the style was believably 19th century, and the famine was crushingly vivid. It's just that the sudden gear change - without any real ending (whether goof or bad) for the characters we've come to care for - was jarring and left me reeling. I suppose THAT may have been the point: to make readers flail and feel unduly punished, as the Irish who suffered the British regime did, but the comparison seems far-fetched. I'm not sure. I feel like this could've been handled a little better, so that readers have insight into the horrors while also having the story wrap up in an unambiguous way.
"as long as the papers have a way of describing Irish unrest as a primitive barbarism, they will run with the story. All the while, real Irish women starve to death in the fields."
"I spoke of McGonigle's trickery, the need for investigation. He of the starcing and the dead. I spoke of civic duty, he of market protectionism."
"All the sloshy marine anguished cough of the Irish language."
Usually when you read a book, you can tell early on what the point of it is: whether it is to make you feel a certain feeling, or to consider a certain subject. I fear this book was a bit unclear as to what it wanted from me. The beginning and middle were solid, but the ending lost the plot a bit. For the majority of the story, the Irish famine (aka the Irish genocide at the hands of the British Empire) was mostly on the periphery, a constant known but not the main point, as the focus is on our ornithologist and mysterious child-ward - their interactions and growing relationship. Suddenly, towards the end, the famine becomes the main point, and our characters are utterly side-lined. Don't get me wrong, it's written very well; the style was believably 19th century, and the famine was crushingly vivid. It's just that the sudden gear change - without any real ending (whether goof or bad) for the characters we've come to care for - was jarring and left me reeling. I suppose THAT may have been the point: to make readers flail and feel unduly punished, as the Irish who suffered the British regime did, but the comparison seems far-fetched. I'm not sure. I feel like this could've been handled a little better, so that readers have insight into the horrors while also having the story wrap up in an unambiguous way.
"as long as the papers have a way of describing Irish unrest as a primitive barbarism, they will run with the story. All the while, real Irish women starve to death in the fields."
"I spoke of McGonigle's trickery, the need for investigation. He of the starcing and the dead. I spoke of civic duty, he of market protectionism."
"All the sloshy marine anguished cough of the Irish language."
June 21, 2026
A harrowing and heartbreaking look at extinction events through the lens of historical fiction and naturalism. Walls' fictional English ornithologist, Ignatius Green, is thrust into the realities of the Irish Famine when the monthly supply shipment to the remote island he's camped on to observed the nearly extinct Great Auks contains a young Irish girl, suffering from the effects of the Famine and nearly feral. Ig, as she calls him when she begins speaking, is forced to become a parental figure while speculation about the girl's supposed mother (according to the note attached to the girl), a legendary Irish outlaw with many seemingly impossible feats attributed to her, and the pressures of the Famine take their toll on the nearest mainland community, eventually coming to a head in a violent confrontation between desperate parties and a journey through the heart of an apocalyptically famine-ravaged Ireland. The descriptions of the Famine are vivid, and the framing device of the story being related through Ig's surviving field journals adds a visceral layer to the story that it is utterly engrossing. Highly recommend.
August 10, 2026
Walls does a good job of writing the self-righteous, superior, and rigid Ignatius Green. He’s the perfect person to be the reluctant father figure of the little girl—Bridget—whose language he cannot speak, whose behavior he cannot rationalize, and whose heart he can barely know the depths of. Together, they make a very chaotic and charming tandem.
My favorite part of the novel is when Ignatius started documenting Bridget’s behavior and sketching her as he would the birds. Him stepping up to be her caretaker is also reminiscent of one of the birds stepping up as a father figure to an orphaned chick.
The plot itself is intriguing, if a little mysterious. And it is an absolutely crazy ride. Toward the end, the title takes on a different meaning: As the Great Auks face the threat of extinction due to human greed and exploitation, humans themselves are hardly winning against famine, driving them to near extinction.
And it is in this pandemonium that Ignatius sees the worst of humanity, and learns to gather scraps of it from what he can.
₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ₊˚
𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗳𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴:
❊ Enjoyability — 🍇🍇🍇🍇
❊ Depth/Relevance — 🍉🍉🍉🍉
❊ Writing style — 🍎🍎🍎
❊ Pacing, structure, and dialogue — 🍊🍊🍊🍊
❊ Characterization — 🍈🍈🍈🍈
𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 4.75
My favorite part of the novel is when Ignatius started documenting Bridget’s behavior and sketching her as he would the birds. Him stepping up to be her caretaker is also reminiscent of one of the birds stepping up as a father figure to an orphaned chick.
The plot itself is intriguing, if a little mysterious. And it is an absolutely crazy ride. Toward the end, the title takes on a different meaning: As the Great Auks face the threat of extinction due to human greed and exploitation, humans themselves are hardly winning against famine, driving them to near extinction.
And it is in this pandemonium that Ignatius sees the worst of humanity, and learns to gather scraps of it from what he can.
₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ₊˚
𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗳𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴:
❊ Enjoyability — 🍇🍇🍇🍇
❊ Depth/Relevance — 🍉🍉🍉🍉
❊ Writing style — 🍎🍎🍎
❊ Pacing, structure, and dialogue — 🍊🍊🍊🍊
❊ Characterization — 🍈🍈🍈🍈
𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 4.75
April 21, 2026
A novel plot set in 1847 about an ornithologist living on an Irish island to monitor nesting of a small Great Auk colony. The Irish potato famine is in full force. His supplies arrive by boat one day and secreted within is a feral girl, filthy, incommunicative, and weak with hunger. He doesn't want her and doesn't know how to care for her. Its a weird mystery in an unusual setting. Short, fast read.
April 5, 2026
A both a Conservation Biologist and the decedent of the Irish diaspora this book felt immensely personal. At its heart the book centers the perspective of an ornithologist sent to a remote island to watch the last of the Great Auks. Ok, I'm in full stop with that plot point alone. However as the story progresses, he becomes the unwitting, and initially unwilling, caretaker of a child with a mysterious past. Equal parts found family and natural history this book talks about the extinction and the frightening ways that seemingly casual acts can lead to the last days. The Auks did not survive, the Irish did, but in bot cases the protagonist' job is to record, in epistolary fashion, the slow violence of loss. I immensely enjoyed this book and will be looking for was to integrate it into my classes.
April 3, 2026
mwah mwah mwah waar gaan we heen? waarom houdt hij van die vogels? waarom is dat meisje zo raar?? ik heb heel veel vragen en vond het niet zo fijn lezen
nouja het was ook een gok van diegene die hm gaf
nouja het was ook een gok van diegene die hm gaf
June 11, 2026
4.5 ⭐️
July 1, 2026
I really had absolutely no clue how this book was going to end. A wild ride from start to finish
August 17, 2026
Impactful. Moving. Harrowing.
July 3, 2026
huh? ... and also what? :)
May 7, 2026
can’t wait for pedro pascal to play ig in the film adaptation
July 17, 2026
i didn’t want their story to end! but then it did, felt like the author didn’t know what to do with the ending.
May 8, 2026
Kinda made me broody for my future 6 beautiful hazel eyed children
May 18, 2026
This book purports to be the field notes of a Great Auk trip by an Englishman to a small outcropping of rocks off the coast of Ireland during the time of the Irish Potato Famine(1847; the auk was supposed to have been extinct in 1844, so this is a tiny remnant of a once great population.) The main character is an oblivious Englishman ignorant of the plight of the Irish and politically sure that giving free food to starving people is wrong. Then, enter chaos. His supplies are delivered by the Irish employees of his wealthy British patron with an addition -- a young, very sick girl with a note pinned on her chest, telling our "hero" he needs to care for her. Meanwhile, there are numerous newspaper articles inserted about the murderous widow of man who was shot as the authorities were trying to destroy his house because he was unable to pay his rent. This is a meditation on both colonialism's lack of compassion and a cry of the heart against the recent rise of Irish anti-immigration activists, when in the 1800's Irish were leaving in droves for the US and other places just to survive. Remarkably funny, gender-bending, deeply researched fiction! I was glad I was warned that the ending does not offer a conclusion to the story, so I could just enjoy it without hoping for resolution.
Painfully funny story of the complete extinction of a species due to political differences, colonial indifference, and distain for the poor and starving. A parable for our time.
Painfully funny story of the complete extinction of a species due to political differences, colonial indifference, and distain for the poor and starving. A parable for our time.
June 17, 2026
“I do not feel particularly sane?”
On a one-night trip to Olema – about an hour north of San Francisco – I wandered into Point Reyes Books after having a bloody mary at lunch. I passed the new fiction section and headed to my usual: the fantasy & sci-fi shelves. I’ve read a lot of the mainstream stuff recently so nothing caught my eye. I turned away and was working my way slowly out of the store when I passed field notes from an extinction. I didn’t even realize it was fiction when I picked it up.
I’ve long been interested in these types of natural history stories – the non-fiction version at least – and was intrigued, thinking it to be some Darwin-esque tale where Auks are discovered, documented, and saved. I didn’t open it after reading the blurb; I just headed straight to the register.
It was not, in fact, some swashbuckling and romanticized naturalist adventure from Darwin’s days aboard the HMS Beagle. Instead, field notes from an extinction is a twisted and tragic story, part science and thriller and family and history. And that’s why it works so well. I read this in two days in a foggy haze of insanity and felt deeply uncomfortable for like ninety percent of the book. There is depth, growth, sorrow, anger, and love hidden in this notebook-as-a-novel set during the Irish potato famine while at the same time delivering the natural history elements so… naturally… that creates an outstanding juxtaposition.
I’m not sure if I’m happy I found this book but I’m glad I read it. Truly a tragedy in the best sense of the word. Pour one out for MacBeth.
On a one-night trip to Olema – about an hour north of San Francisco – I wandered into Point Reyes Books after having a bloody mary at lunch. I passed the new fiction section and headed to my usual: the fantasy & sci-fi shelves. I’ve read a lot of the mainstream stuff recently so nothing caught my eye. I turned away and was working my way slowly out of the store when I passed field notes from an extinction. I didn’t even realize it was fiction when I picked it up.
I’ve long been interested in these types of natural history stories – the non-fiction version at least – and was intrigued, thinking it to be some Darwin-esque tale where Auks are discovered, documented, and saved. I didn’t open it after reading the blurb; I just headed straight to the register.
It was not, in fact, some swashbuckling and romanticized naturalist adventure from Darwin’s days aboard the HMS Beagle. Instead, field notes from an extinction is a twisted and tragic story, part science and thriller and family and history. And that’s why it works so well. I read this in two days in a foggy haze of insanity and felt deeply uncomfortable for like ninety percent of the book. There is depth, growth, sorrow, anger, and love hidden in this notebook-as-a-novel set during the Irish potato famine while at the same time delivering the natural history elements so… naturally… that creates an outstanding juxtaposition.
I’m not sure if I’m happy I found this book but I’m glad I read it. Truly a tragedy in the best sense of the word. Pour one out for MacBeth.
May 18, 2026
It's an odd book, that isn't entirely successful, but scores points for originality and heart.
First there is the structure of the book as a set of field notes. I don't think that I have seen this one before. Certainly, their have been novels structured as packages of letters or as dictionaries or encyclopedias and in other non-traditional formats, but not to my knowledge as a naturalist's field notes. There is a bit of a square peg in the round hole problem in doing this, but since Ignatius Green is himself a square peg in a round hole, there is an uncomfortable, but oddly appropriate fit between the form of the book and the character.
And then there is Green's character. He is difficult, fussy and filled with the prejudices of a Victorian gentleman. He's a stickler for rules, quick to bluster and threaten. He looks down on the Irish as being barely human. His study of the Great Auks is meticulous and filled with care for individual birds, though he pays little heed to the dominant fact that they are on the verge of extinction. But for all of his many and obvious faults, he is redeemed by his kindness. His care for Bridgett is awkward and incomplete. Of course, much of this is due to the language barrier between them (a metaphor) and to her own strange wildness (another metaphor), but it is mostly on account of the difficulty of a middle-aged nineteenth century Englishman to relate to a young girl (another metaphor). And yet he manages to bridge it to Bridgett, so that they develop a deep bond over the course of the book. At the end he's no Silas Marner. He's still a fussy prejudiced jerk. But he has demonstrated another side of his personality that allows us to like him.
The other principal characters -Bridgett, her mother, Father Frank and McGonnigal are also all deeply flawed and yet each of them has a very human motivation, at least when they are operating on an individual person to person level that gives them all a measure of redemption.
The book takes place in 1847, but I looked up the extinction of the Great Auks. The last pair was killed in 1840. Why would the author make that choice in a book that is careful about evoking the authenticity of its era? At first I thought that it was the author's way of reminding us that in the end this is fiction. Maybe that's part of it, but the bigger reason is that it is key to the story for it to take place concurrently with the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845. It was easier to keep a few Auks around beyond their expiration date than to push back the date of the famine to the decade when there were still some Auks.
First there is the structure of the book as a set of field notes. I don't think that I have seen this one before. Certainly, their have been novels structured as packages of letters or as dictionaries or encyclopedias and in other non-traditional formats, but not to my knowledge as a naturalist's field notes. There is a bit of a square peg in the round hole problem in doing this, but since Ignatius Green is himself a square peg in a round hole, there is an uncomfortable, but oddly appropriate fit between the form of the book and the character.
And then there is Green's character. He is difficult, fussy and filled with the prejudices of a Victorian gentleman. He's a stickler for rules, quick to bluster and threaten. He looks down on the Irish as being barely human. His study of the Great Auks is meticulous and filled with care for individual birds, though he pays little heed to the dominant fact that they are on the verge of extinction. But for all of his many and obvious faults, he is redeemed by his kindness. His care for Bridgett is awkward and incomplete. Of course, much of this is due to the language barrier between them (a metaphor) and to her own strange wildness (another metaphor), but it is mostly on account of the difficulty of a middle-aged nineteenth century Englishman to relate to a young girl (another metaphor). And yet he manages to bridge it to Bridgett, so that they develop a deep bond over the course of the book. At the end he's no Silas Marner. He's still a fussy prejudiced jerk. But he has demonstrated another side of his personality that allows us to like him.
The other principal characters -Bridgett, her mother, Father Frank and McGonnigal are also all deeply flawed and yet each of them has a very human motivation, at least when they are operating on an individual person to person level that gives them all a measure of redemption.
The book takes place in 1847, but I looked up the extinction of the Great Auks. The last pair was killed in 1840. Why would the author make that choice in a book that is careful about evoking the authenticity of its era? At first I thought that it was the author's way of reminding us that in the end this is fiction. Maybe that's part of it, but the bigger reason is that it is key to the story for it to take place concurrently with the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845. It was easier to keep a few Auks around beyond their expiration date than to push back the date of the famine to the decade when there were still some Auks.
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