On Extinction

Challenger's privilege is great, her courage exemplary, and no one could doubt her passion. This book is an urgent attempt to understand how we got into this mess, and how we might go forward, knowing that we are capable of causing, and of feeling, great loss -- Kathleen Jamie * Guardian *
[The] move," says Challenger, "from distinctive cultural knowledge born of the varied attributes of landscapes to the universal cultural knowledge of technologies is akin to the disappearance of diversity in nature." This book offers no remedy for the decline of the sublime in favour of the picturesque, but it does advise that we weigh our losses against our supposed gains. -- Iain Finlayson * The Times *
A strikingly peripatetic project, both geographically and intellectually ... her prose paintings are memorable and her digressions consistently thought provoking. The result is enjoyably ruminative -- Peter Carty * Independent on Sunday *
In this wide-ranging and often beautiful book, Challenger sets off on a series of peregrinations through abandoned or imperilled places, from the relics of tin mining in Cornwall to the depopulated islands of Tierra del Fuego ... Challenger is an exquisite writer. An award-winning poet, she's capable of astonishing flourishes of phrase ... It's to be hoped that this beautiful, troubling book will encourage more people to regain their interest in the outside world: the planet we both belong to and seem curiously driven to destroy -- Olivia Laing * Observer *
Challenger combines her meditations on our fragmenting world into a finely integrated study of loss * Nature *
An extended meditation on the way we in the West have come to be "estranged from nature" in the space of a few short generations... Fittingly perhaps, Challengers best writing comes out of her much debated trip to Iqaluit. Here she discovers, there are different kinds of extinction -- Roger Cox * Scotland on Sunday *
A rigorous and animated book convincingly tackling a topic many of us choose to ignore * Stylist *
Challenger's observation that "the indefatigable action of time made it impossible to fix on a point for return" to me sums up the nature of nature itself and the ambiguity of our relationship with it ...The book ends with Challenger discovering her local environment from her narrowboat in Wicken Fen, and with the idea that a personal connection to nature, whatever that might be, is a good start. On Extinction doesn't offer answers to any of the complex questions it raises, but it will make you pause to consider your own relationship with the natural world that surrounds you -- Sandra Knapp * New Scientist *
lovingly crafted and beautifully executed ... Challenger is a poet by trade and has written a wonderfully thoughtful examination of the concept and reality of extinction, ranging form travelogue to philosophy, and biology to environmental exploration -- Doug Johnstone * Big Issue *
Melanie Challenger is an extremely talented new writer in the currently highly popular field of Nature Writing. I shall follow her career with great interest, and look forward immensely to her next book. * Friends of Darwin *
''On Extinction ponders the disappearance of industries, cultures and species, and examines our emotional responses to loss' * Financial Times *
A poignant, beautifully written account of how extinction makes us feel. Poets and philosophers have tackled this subject before, but this exquisite meditation goes straight to the top of the literary charts ... an honest book that will devastate and uplift you in equal measure -- Jonathan Wright * Geographical *
The most poetic book about the environment published this year ... some of her descriptions of the places she visits are dazzlingly good, notably her writing on Iqaluit in the Canadian Arctic -- Roger Cox * Scotsman *