GoodReads Synopsis:
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
Review:
I really wanted to like this book because of the premise. It’s about a badass all-female crew exploring the unknown, told from the point of view of a biologist. I am a female biologist. I explore remote field locations. Again, I wanted to like this book. But unfortunately, it really wasn’t my cup of tea.
Everything in the book is told in uncertainties. For example, a few excerpts:
“I don’t know why the word tower came to me, given that it tunneled into the ground.”
“Later I realized I might have misread her expression…”
“I don’t know quite what I saw.”
“I could not tell which part I craved and which I feared…”
“Perhaps I’d been wrong about curiosity.”
These few examples are from just the first few pages. I’m sure you can imagine how the rest of the book goes. The author does a great job of setting up a metaphysical landscape where the reality and nature of everything is brought into question. The whole time I felt like the book was slippery; like there wasn’t really anything there.
I know that this is a great example of a specific writing style. But this book is kind of like a Picasso to me; I can appreciate the ingenuity around the creation of the piece but I just don’t like the style.