Three Closes to Finish It

Finished this one over three closes, a few pages each night after the line went down. Annihilation, first book of the Southern Reach trilogy, VanderMeer, FSG Originals put it out in 2014. Four women go into Area X, no names, just titles: biologist, psychologist, anthropologist, surveyor.

The biologist tells it, in a journal, and she’s an unreliable narrator, plain and simple, you’re never sure if what she’s seeing is real or if she’s slowly going insane right there on the page.

I picked it up because a regular left it on the bar after a late seating, said it scared him more than anything he’d read in years. He wasn’t wrong exactly. It’s not jump scare scared, it’s the kind where you catch yourself rereading a paragraph because you’re not sure what you just saw happen?? There’s a beast moaning down in the reeds near the tower, or the tunnel, reviewers in that file can’t even agree what to call the thing, and that one scene alone put the hair up on my neck.

Thematically it sits somewhere south of Solaris, more Tarkovsky’s version than Lem’s, though I’ve only seen the movie.

Pace is slow, deliberate, more about what isn’t explained than what is. I don’t mind that most nights, tired as I get after a shift, a book that doesn’t rush works fine for me. Some nights though I wanted more plot, something solid to hold onto besides mood. Short book, and claustrophobic even for how much open ground the characters cover.

I heard they’re making a movie of it, Natalie Portman as the biologist, which is a strange thing to picture given how blank the character stays on the page. Prose is spare and clean, no fat on it, which I respect the same way I respect a tight mise en place.

Won’t spoil the ending. Not for everyone, I get why some people bounce clean off it. I’m picking up book two next week, curious enough to keep going even without answers.

Four stars, rounding up, because it stuck with me past the shift I finished it on.