The Science of Last Things

In this luminous collection of essays, Ellen Wayland-Smith probes the raw edges of human existence, those periods of life in which our bodies remind us of our transience and the boundaries of the self dissolve.

From the Old Testament to Maggie Nelson, these explorations are grounded in a rich network of associations. In an essay on the postpartum body, Wayland-Smith interweaves her experience as a mother with accounts of phantom limbs and Greek mythology to meditate on moments when pieces of our being exist outside our bodies. In order to comprehend diagnoses of depression and breast cancer, she delves into LA hippie culture’s love affair with crystals and Emily Dickinson’s geological poetry. Her experience with chemotherapy leads to reflection on Western medicine and its intolerance of death and the healing capacity of nature. And throughout, she challenges the false separation between the human and the 'primeval, animal mode of being'.

At once intimate and expansive, The Science of Last Things peels back layers of human thought and behaviour, breaking down our modern conceptions of individuality and reframing us as participants in a world of astounding elegance and mystery.

'Offering a deeply necessary, clear-eyed look at who we are as flesh-and-bone bodies during the climate crisis, this is a book that searches and finds meaning in both the hard truths and the value of wonder.' – Ada Limón

'In The Science of Last Things, Ellen Wayland-Smith seamlessly blends the life of the body and the life of the mind, writing less about endings per se (although those, as well) than about evanescence, and the understanding that we all must disappear. That this represents both an individual reckoning and a collective one should go without saying, and these essays range widely in angle and approach, addressing the death of Wayland-Smith's father from pancreatic cancer and her own diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer, as well as broader social and natural histories. The common thread, of course, is the author's sensibility, which comes to us infused with ideas and language, and a rigorous ability to see things not as we wish them to be but, instead, as they are. What I mean is that there is no false solace here, although there are many consolations. The Science of Last Things is an acute and necessary book.' – David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking

'Ellen Wayland-Smith’s writing is a magical alchemy of spiritual insight and scientific wonder. She delves into overwhelming mysteries – birth and death, the origin of life and the end of the world – and miraculously finds new meaning in them, responding to personal and planetary loss and decay with radiant reflections that awaken, delight, and console. These essays are an essential companion for life at the end of the world.' – Briallen Hopper, author of Hard to Love: Essays & Confessions