With Choir, Aubrey Ryan has created a new myth most needed. It tells of an origin before our origin story, and it stirs the story of our end. “Then birth was unsurvivable,” she says, because as mothers know and poets may note, the end of that story is birthed at the start. In this creation myth the end of our world is told by our acts, more like “nesting bowls” than a linear narration, and all of us complicit in the choir, though some voices more than others: the anti-heroes or “kings,” those who would send their cars around the sun. By now, our end is so entwined with our discoveries, maps are literally made of earth. As in the Greek plays, Ryan enlists a chorus most convincing—hers are oracles, guardians, bees—to help in the telling. Because it is a horrifying tale, but she knows the story of the end must be the kindest tale of all.

—Beth Roberts, author of Like You and Brief Moral History in Blue