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San Francisco Chronicle
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
In ‘The Island of Last Things,' a reimagined Alcatraz bears witness to the end of the wild
In the near-future world Emma Sloley brings to life in her second novel, 'The Island of Last Things,' San Francisco Bay pulses with jellyfish, the Marin hills have succumbed to perma-fires and the island of Alcatraz has become the last zoo in the world. To many of the characters that inhabit Sloley's novel, due out Tuesday, Aug. 12, the prison of Alcatraz and the zoo that now occupies its rocky landscape have become a beacon of hope for some of the last species on the planet. To others, it is more of a museum, where the memory of these animals — elephants, wolves, birds and more — are already passing on into history like so many other now extinct species before them. But to all, in this near-future, where billionaires and cartel gangs vie to exploit and protect these animals, the idea of this place exists like a mirror for our own humanity. Or, as the Australian-born Sloley, who divides her writing time between Mérida, Mexico and California, told the Chronicle, 'To live in the Anthropocene is to live with extinction, even when it's happening out of sight.' This 'cautionary tale,' as Sloley calls it, is all too present in the pages of 'The Island of Last Things,' where her two main characters — a younger, idealistic zookeeper named Camille, and a new edition to the staff, but a far more experienced hand with animals, Sailor — begin to question the commercialization of these animals. Those with the ability to pay an exorbitant entrance fee are described as releasing a 'reverent gasp' upon hearing they are looking at the last animal of their kind. 'There was something distasteful about how much the guests perked up when you told them an animal was the last of its kind,' Sloley writes in an early chapter narrated by Camille. 'Like it conferred a special status on them to be so close to an extinction.' This feeling, which steadily builds to a breaking point in the novel, inhabits every waking hour of Sailor's life, and, in turn, infects Camille, especially when Sailor first brings up the rumor of a sanctuary where animals can roam free. 'Sailor especially wants to write a different story than the one she sees unfolding,' Sloley told the Chronicle. 'She understands more than any other character that a better world doesn't just arrive, you have to go out and create it.' This desire is what 'The Island of Last Things' is all about. It is the core of what drives Camille's and Sailor's stories and makes the novel an important, engaging read, filled with the hope for what could be, all while the characters of this world live through what is. 'While the idea of a mass die-off of animals and plants may be far-fetched in reality,' she said, 'The forces that come together to exploit these tragedies in the story are all too believable.' Like all good books of fiction, 'The Island of Last Things' tells a real-world story that could be a few degrees of separation from our present-day world. For research, the author made it a point to visit zoos and talk to zookeepers. 'You learn a lot of fascinating insider intel about zoo life,' she said, 'But one of the biggest takeaways for me was how utterly devoted these employees are to the animals in their care.' Sloley expanded on her research by leaning into conversations she had with a Philadelphia-based architect who specializes in zoo design, Greg Dykstra: 'His insights about the relationship between animals and their environments have been so illuminating. Zoo design demands a delicate balance: satisfying both the human visitors' desire to observe and feel close to the animals in a natural-feeling environment, and the desire of the residents to live healthy, stress-free lives.' In addition to this, Sloley spoke about encountering the term umwelt, a German word that, roughly translated, applies to the environment and how animals and humans perceive and interact with their environment through their many senses, like sight, touch and sound. 'I think it's a really beautiful idea and a way into understanding and empathizing with the other living beings with whom we share this planet.' Sloley visited the real Alcatraz Island several times during the course of writing the book, and played up its 'funhouse' qualities. 'I wanted the tours to project a utopian fantasy where animals and nature are restored to an Edenic state, but it's all just smoke and mirrors.' With 'The Island of Last Things,' Sloley has created a work of activism, where the stories within exist not simply as a way to understand this world, but as a way to understand our own. It is a beautiful depiction of a changing landscape, often highlighted by startling lines of prose that focus the reader's attention not just on the characters, but inward on oneself. Yet despite the dangerous world created by Sloley in 'The Island of Last Things,' there is reason to be optimistic. 'Much like Sailor, I think it's important to reject doomerism. We need to fight with urgency to protect our wild spaces, our right to breathable air and drinkable water and our right to live joyful and free lives, but the future isn't written yet. All of us get to write it, and that collective project feels like the essence of hope to me.'
Los Angeles Times
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Alcatraz is home to the last remaining zoo in Emma Sloley's resilient ‘The Island of Last Things'
Hundreds to thousands of animal species go extinct every year, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and things are projected to get even worse if climate change continues unabated. A new novel by U.S.-based Australian writer Emma Sloley, 'The Island of Last Things,' imagines a time in the nearish future when not only animals but whole ecosystems of living things have been wiped out, leaving a handful of surviving zoos around the globe attempting to preserve the species in their care. Except that those zoos close, one by one, due to a multitude of reasons: insufficient funding, a movement protesting the care and feeding of (nonhuman) animals in a time of mass human suffering and a deadly strain of Candida spreading through the wildlife population. The last remaining zoo sits on Alcatraz Island, inhabiting the grounds and structures of the former prison. 'The Island of Last Things' is largely narrated by Camille, a woman in her mid-20s who prefers the company of animals to people and has worked on Alcatraz for pretty much the entirety of her adulthood. Unlike most of the other workers, who travel to the mainland every Sunday, Camille stays put. 'I only ever felt fully real when I was working,' she explains early in the book, 'and after the workday was done I retreated into a state of minimal existence, like a robot powered down between tasks.' She's a natural with the animals, though, her presence as calming to them as theirs is life-giving to her. Everything begins to change for Camille when a new zookeeper, Sailor, arrives on the island. Sailor is in her 40s and had a long career at the Paris Zoo before it, too, closed down. Camille is assigned to give her the new employee tour, and the two quickly form a bond based in their deep love of, and respect for, the animals in their care. It'd be easy to assume that all 200 or so zookeepers on the island are there for that exact reason too, but the reality is more complicated. Zookeeping is a practical choice for some 'because it offers a better life than anything else going,' Sailor points out. Zookeepers 'may as well live and die surrounded by animals than in a sweatshop or war zone, right?' Then, too, there's the sheer bleakness of the role: 'Everyone starts off enthusiastic,' Camille tells Sailor, 'but then, I don't know. They just sort of give up.' And why wouldn't they? After all, they are aware, every single day, that the animals locked in their various enclosures are some of the, if not the, last of their kind, and they're living out the end of their species in an environment far removed from their native habitat. It's no wonder that many keepers choose to emotionally distance themselves and sink into apathy. As Sailor settles into her new job on Alcatraz, she begins to shake things up, which both thrills and terrifies Camille, who has always kept her head down and followed the rules. Even more meaningful to Camille than Sailor's boundary pushing, though, is Sailor's friendship and how she includes Camille in whatever she's dreaming up: 'it's hard to describe to anyone who hasn't lived a life of loneliness how powerfully that casual 'we' worked on me.' Camille is an interesting narrator in part because she's what some might derogatorily call a 'passive' character, but whom I read instead as intensely observant and watchful. It's true that she's not the instigator of most of the drama that occurs on the island once Sailor arrives, but she's often along for the ride, surprising herself over and over again by how far she'll go to maintain her friend's attention and respect. Camille has a front row seat to how Sailor is constantly working those around her — flirting, befriending, gently threatening, subtly manipulating — in order to get what she wants, and perhaps it's because what Sailor wants is always in service to the animals that Camille doesn't mind. Still, there's a bittersweet dramatic irony at play because the reader can recognize that Camille is, at least sometimes, yet another of Sailor's tools. In brief chapters that alternate with the main narrative, Sailor's history comes alive in bits and pieces, and it becomes clear that she's intent on trying to smuggle animals out of the zoo to get them to a rumored sanctuary on a vast tract of land somewhere in China. But Alcatraz Zoo is owned by a billionaire (of course) and is guarded within an inch of its life, so the whole endeavor seems far-fetched and potentially impossible — yet Sailor's plan, once hatched, moves forward despite all of Camille's concerns. Is the sanctuary even real? Readers never get a completely satisfactory answer to this, and the way Sailor talks about it certainly makes it sound like a fairy tale, one that she and Camille both willingly believe in because the prospect of a world without any hope is just too painful. Indeed, 'The Island of Last Things' doesn't sugarcoat how bad things have gotten in that future world, but Sloley refuses to let her characters succumb to despair; she is intent on highlighting the small moments of beauty, joy, and care that emerge even during disastrous, horrible times. 'Do me a favor, huh?' Sailor asks Camille one night. 'Promise me you'll start imagining a better world than this one.' Imagining such a world, Sloley seems to be reminding her readers, is the only way to begin the work of creating it. Masad, a books and culture critic, is the author of the novel 'All My Mother's Lovers' and the forthcoming novel 'Beings.'
