I wanted to read The Extinction of Irena Rey because of the pretty cover, but also because the plot does sound like it might be interesting: The novel is about eight translators who gather in Poland at the house of the writer Irena Ray to translate her next novel, but then Irena goes missing. The thing is, as soon as I started reading the first chapter, I knew I had made a mistake and that I was not going to like this novel.

The idea behind The Extinction of Irena Rey is that the novel is an English translation of a book about Irena’s disappearance written in Polish by a Spanish writer. I was immediately put off by the stilted writing, but I persevered, and it became easier to read. What really put me off this novel, though, are the bizarre characters. The eight translators, initially known to each other and the reader by the languages into which they translate, such as Spanish, English, Swedish, French, Serbian, Slovenian, German, and Ukrainian, have a weird, obsessive relationship with Irena, despite Irena being irrationally controlling by not allowing them to translate other authors or share personal information about themselves with each other (they are not even allowed to know each other’s real names). As the novel progresses, the translators alternate between looking for Irena and translating her novel, and their behaviour becomes increasingly strange, almost to the point of maniacal.

The worst character, though, is the narrator, Spanish aka Emilia. Emilia is seriously unhinged. As the translators search for Irena and learn more about her, you can start to see the scales fall from their eyes, but not Emilia. Emilia is madly obsessed with Irena and does not want to hear any slander against her. Emilia also becomes obsessed with the handsome Swedish aka Freddie and spends a lot of time daydreaming about having sex with him or actually having sex with him (even though he is married). She also has an irrational hatred for another one of the translators, English aka Alexis, and believes that Alexis is trying to make a move on Freddie even though Alexis is a lesbian. Emilia spends a lot of time just running around, in the woods, in the cemetery, in the rain, displaying paranoid behaviour. It is just so…weird.

I do not understand what The Extinction of Irena Rey is trying to say. I think by the disconnect between Alexis’s footnotes and Emilia’s book, and revelations late in the story that Irena’s translators may not be translating her works authentically, Croft is saying that translated stories cannot be trusted and that they censor the original works, but Croft has made a career out of being a translator, so I do not understand why she would piss on her own profession. This novel makes me feel dumb. It is also supposed to be a “hilarious” novel, but I did not find it funny at all?? I feel like it is one of those books that pretentious people pretend to like while they parrot other people’s opinions about it.