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Summary
Summary
Survival is the name of the game as the line blurs between reality TV and reality itself in Alexandra Oliva's fast-paced novel of suspense.
She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far.
It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens--but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them--a young woman the show's producers call Zoo--stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game.
Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life--and husband--she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills--and learn new ones as she goes.
But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways--and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing.
Sophisticated and provocative, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real: how readily we cast our judgments, how easily we are manipulated.
Praise for The Last One
"[Alexandra] Oliva brilliantly scrutinizes the recorded (and heavily revised) narratives we believe, and the last one hundred pages will have the reader constantly guessing just what Zoo is capable of doing to find her way back home." -- Washington Post
"A high-concept, high-octane affair . . . The conceit is undoubtedly clever and . . . well executed, but what makes The Last One such a page-turner is Zoo herself: practical, tough-minded and appealing." -- The Guardian
"Oliva takes this (possibly) post-apocalyptic setting, grafts on a knowledgeable skewering of the inner workings of reality television and gives us a gripping story of survival. . . . This is the genius of Oliva's storytelling. . . . [She] makes a stunning debut with this page turner, and becomes a writer to watch." -- Seattle Times
"Oliva delivers a pulse-pounding psychological tale of survival. . . . [She] masterfully manipulates her characters and the setting, creating a mash-up of popular TV genres: Survivor meets The Walking Dead ." -- Bookpage
"The TV show Survivor meets Cormac McCarthy's The Road in Oliva's stellar debut. . . . Fueled by brilliantly intimate and insightful writing as well as an endearing and fully realized female lead, this apocalyptic novel draws its power from Zoo's realizations about society and herself as she struggles to survive long enough to somehow make it back to her home." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
" The Last One seamlessly melds two of our contemporary obsessions--the threat of global catastrophe and the staged drama of reality TV--into a fiercely imagined tale of the human psyche under stress. This is an uncompromising, thought-provoking debut." --Justin Cronin
"Like The Hunger Games, Alexandra Oliva's novel is page-turning and deeply unsettling." --Rosamund Lupton
"Tense and gorgeous and so damn clever . . . I loved every second." --Lauren Beukes
Author Notes
Alexandra Oliva was born and raised in upstate New York. She has a BA in history from Yale University and an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. The Last One is her first novel.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The TV show Survivor meets Cormac McCarthy's The Road in Oliva's stellar debut. One of the 12 contestants on In the Dark, a reality show set in the remote Pennsylvania wilderness and billed as a "reality experience of unprecedented scale," is Zoo, so called by the show's producers because she works at a wildlife sanctuary and rehabilitation center. Zoo decided to go on In the Dark as one last big adventure before settling down to start a family with her husband. The host explains that the game is a race with no finish line; the only way out is to quit. Trouble arrives in the form of an unidentified pathogen that begins to kill off a substantial portion of the world's population. Alone on an extended solo challenge, Zoo has no idea that the lines between reality and reality show have been blurred into nonexistence. Fueled by brilliantly intimate and insightful writing as well as an endearing and fully realized female lead, this apocalyptic novel draws its power from Zoo's realizations about society and herself as she struggles to survive long enough to somehow make it back to her home and, hopefully, her husband. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Zoo, a nature-preserve educator, joined the cast of the reality show In the Dark to experience a final solo adventure before starting a family. The competition is set in a large forest, and the cast, selected for maximum volatility, competes to win food and survival tools. With fierce determination and some basic survival skills, Zoo emerges as a top contender. After their small teams split into solo challenges, Zoo notices a dark shift in the producers' reality-bending machinations: disappearing cameramen, torturously long periods of solitude, and even horrifically realistic fake bodies planted in her path. But when Zoo encounters Brennan, whom she quickly pegs as an artfully inserted replacement cameraman, his despairing stories of pandemic disease and mass chaos force Zoo to question her perceptions about what she has witnessed while stumbling toward the show's finish line. Part wilderness-survival thriller and part dystopian pandemic story, Oliva's debut is a gripping portrayal of an ordinary person's evolving survival instincts as she realizes that she can't trust the reality she sees.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2016 Booklist
Guardian Review
The Last One by Alexandra Oliva; Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus; Paradime by Alan Glynn; Without Trace by Simon Booker; Bird in a Cage by Frederic Dard American author Alexandra Oliva's debut novel, The Last One (Michael Joseph, [pound]9.99), is a high-concept, high-octane affair that sets out its stall on the first page: wilderness-survival reality TV meets global pandemic. Eager for one last adventure before settling down to start a family, "Zoo", as she is nicknamed by the producers, joins 11 others to compete for a $1m prize. There is no voting contestants off the set in this show: nobody leaves until they admit defeat. Cut off by reality TV from reality, the group have no idea that, during their first week of foraging, fire-starting and orienteering challenges, a mystery disease is wiping out the rest of the population at a rate of knots. Alone on a solo mission, Zoo, determined to stick to the rules and win the prize, searches deserted towns, complete with authentic-looking (and -smelling) corpse "props", for the clues she has been told to find, unaware that no one is filming and the audience no longer exists. The conceit is undoubtedly clever and -- apart from some overreaching at the end -- well executed, but what makes The Last One such a page-turner is Zoo herself: practical, tough-minded and appealing. The protagonist of Epiphany Jones (Orenda Books, [pound]8.99) also has trouble with reality, albeit for entirely different reasons. It's fair to say that Michael Grothaus's first novel, which opens with loner Jerry Dresden masturbating in front of a "celebrity porn" website, won't be to everyone's taste. Jerry, who suffers from hallucinations, is top of the list of suspects after one of his colleagues at the Art Institute of Chicago is murdered and a Van Gogh painting is stolen. One of Jerry's hallucinations turns out to be real -- the eponymous Epiphany Jones, who asks for his help in return for providing evidence of his innocence. The novel takes an abrupt left turn from disconcertingly funny to very dark indeed when it is revealed that Epiphany, who is directed by voices in her head, turns out to be the victim of a brutal trafficker who provides the jaded Hollywood elite with underage girls. Complex, inventive and a genuine shocker, this is the very opposite of a "comfort" read. Yet another type of unreality is present in Alan Glynn's latest novel, Paradime (Faber, [pound]12.99), which plays with the idea of the doppelganger. Traumatised and poor, Danny Lynch has returned to New York after a stint in Afghanistan, where, working as a cook for defence contractor Gideon Logistics, he witnessed a horrific act of violence. In order to keep Danny quiet, the company's lawyers set him up with a job in one of the city's smartest restaurants, where he encounters his double, tech billionaire Teddy Trager. He becomes obsessed with this richer, more successful version of himself, dressing like Trager and managing to fool his colleagues and even his girlfriend -- and then things start to unravel. Bristling with paranoia, this wheels-within-wheels conspiracy novel is both insidious and ingenious. Without Trace (twenty7, [pound]7.99) is the debut novel from screenwriter Simon Booker. Investigative journalist Morgan Vine is a single mother who lives with her teenage daughter Lissa in a converted railway carriage on the beach at Dungeness. Her career in the doldrums, Morgan has started a book group at her local prison, partly from altruistic motives, but mainly in order to stay in contact with her childhood sweetheart, Danny Kilcannon. Danny, who was convicted of killing his 14-year-old stepdaughter, is also thought to have murdered his wife, whose body has never been found. Morgan, who still carries a torch for Danny and believes he is innocent, is pleased when a key witness recants and he is released, but she starts receiving anonymous messages telling her not to trust him -- and then Lissa disappears. With believably flawed characters, a strong sense of place, a tense did-he-or-didn't-he plot and plenty of cliffhangers, Without Trace is an assured start to Booker's projected series. More, please. Frederic Dard (1921-2000) was one of France's most popular and prolific writers of crime fiction, but he is almost unknown in Britain. Pushkin Vertigo is publishing some of his psychological novels, starting with Bird in a Cage ([pound]6.99). Ably translated by David Bellos, it's the story of Albert Harbin, who returns to his childhood home in Paris after an absence of six years. Unsettled and unsettling, Albert is a cagey narrator, but we soon figure out that he has been in prison, and that his incarceration was something to do with the fact that the love of his life, Anna, is no longer around. Spotting a woman in a restaurant who resembles Anna, he scrapes an acquaintance, accompanies her home, and ends up in a world of trouble... Melancholy and atmospheric, with a plot twist worthy of Agatha Christie at her devious best, this brief tale has the hallmark of classic French noir. - Laura Wilson.
Kirkus Review
A young woman's participation in a survival reality show conceals an actual apocalyptic event in the outside world. Telling herself that she is after one last big adventure before starting a family, Zoo (as she is dubbed by producers) decides to participate in a hard-core wilderness survival show. The novel's first narrative strand takes us through the show's initial week: we see a series of group and solo challenges, such as tracking animals and filtering water, accomplished in order to earn prizes. We are also introduced to the reality show contestants, who are called by easy-label names like Asian Chick and Air Force. Zoo quickly rises as a leader among the contestantsshe's easy to get along with and has "moxie." But intercut with the narrative of the show's first week is that of Zoo alone, on what she believes is a long solo challenge. Thinking that the production team has cleared out entire towns and strategically placed corpselike "props" (complete with the smell of decay), Zoo moves east in the direction of her home, determined to be the last one standing and the winner of the $1 million prize. In her debut novel, Oliva has written a book that is clever in the best sense: she is able to skewer reality show culture and dystopian tropes while never letting concept or critique become more important than a good yarn. The novel is thoroughly steeped in its timesthe use of a Reddit-like forum plays a key plot rolebut unlike other dystopian novels, it doesn't so much use contemporary times to warn us about potential future collapse as it shows what impact our times have on the ways we think about identity and human relationships. An astute and compelling entry into the post-apocalypse genre. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Twelve strangers selected for a wilderness survival challenge with a $1 million prize go in expecting a standard reality-show environment: dramatic but not life or death. Unknown to them, a mysterious disease changes the game into a battle for literal survival. One contestant, Zoo, stumbling through the mostly dead world, interprets the devastation around her as props in a game. Narration alternates between Mike Chamberlain, reading scenes about the contest, and Nicol Zanzarella, the voice of Zoo during her solo journey. While plot and style are strong, the story starts at an inexplicable midpoint of Zoo's challenge, transitions to a group scene near the beginning, and is hard to interpret until at least an hour into the audio. VERDICT This complicated construction might make some wish to select the print version, although listeners who stick with it will be rewarded with a fine story and excellent performances.--Janet Martin, Southern Pines P.L., NC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.