Annihilation
Author: Jeff Vandermeer
Series: Southern Reach
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
5/23 much to be said here that was discovered on my reread. lots to be said about grief specifically. still very good.
5/24 third reread, not as good as my first two but i think im in a reading slump a little-- despite this, i am in awe of how much i always find in this short book upon reread, how it drips in humanity and grief and life. having read all of the series this time around, i enjoyed this book in ways i could not before. this book is v sentimental to me and i love it with all my heart
4/25 "perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure the endurable. i don't know when i managed to stand again, to continue on, legs rubbery. i don't know how long that took, but eventually i got up." an april reread this year, this read was a more in depth look at the tower specifically: both as a metaphor for the spiral of grief, and as a doubling from the lighthouse. there is so much doubling in this book-- the tower and the tunnel, the biologist and the ghost bird, the crawler and the lighthouse keeper, the world outside area x and area x. this book also feels much more apocalyptic to me than it has in other years
5/26 this is indeed my most favorite book! have taken a lot more time this year and left v indepth spoiler filled notes on the first half, had a good time this year.
View all my reviews
Summary
My Thoughts
5/23 much to be said here that was discovered on my reread. lots to be said about grief specifically. still very good.
5/24 third reread, not as good as my first two but i think im in a reading slump a little-- despite this, i am in awe of how much i always find in this short book upon reread, how it drips in humanity and grief and life. having read all of the series this time around, i enjoyed this book in ways i could not before. this book is v sentimental to me and i love it with all my heart
4/25 "perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure the endurable. i don't know when i managed to stand again, to continue on, legs rubbery. i don't know how long that took, but eventually i got up." an april reread this year, this read was a more in depth look at the tower specifically: both as a metaphor for the spiral of grief, and as a doubling from the lighthouse. there is so much doubling in this book-- the tower and the tunnel, the biologist and the ghost bird, the crawler and the lighthouse keeper, the world outside area x and area x. this book also feels much more apocalyptic to me than it has in other years
5/26 this is indeed my most favorite book! have taken a lot more time this year and left v in depth spoiler filled notes on the first half, had a good time this year.
Quotes
- "Desolation tries to colonize you."
- "I saw a tower, plunging into the ground."
- "I was unlucky—or was I lucky? Triggered by a disturbance in the flow of air, a nodule in the W chose that moment to burst open and a tiny spray of golden spores spewed out."
- "Would the new owners see the beauty and the importance of leaving it as is, or would they destroy it, create unthinking slaughter in honor of the pool’s real function?"
- "natural phenomena and the results of human activity. We had not been trained to encounter what appeared to be the uncanny."
- "The trees are not trees the birds are not birds and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time
- "We’ve been living in the past this whole time."
- "It was a strange ascent, in contrast to my descents into the Tower. The brackish quality of the light against those graying interior walls was better than the phosphorescence of the Tower, but what I found on these walls unnerved me just as much, if in a different way."
Notes
- i have always thought this felt churchly, like faux biblical... we learn later that it is from a pastor's journal but I wonder what larger meaning this has, and what religion has in the context of this world, esp the biologist's world which is explicitly scientific. i think that perhaps this contrasts the world the biologist knows with the humanly unknown
- looked into whether or not jeff vandermeer has ocd or bc i wanted to see if there was any of that in here, esp after my diagnosis. i am seeing a lot of symptoms with this hypnosis that are similar to how i feel when i am in the throws of ocd: i am compulsive, and have to do something or i feel itchy as described earlier. i looked it up and found this article https://www.jeffvandermeer.com/blog/2016/03/29/ben-roswell-area-x-terroir about nature vs nurture which is very interesting, and while vandermeer may not have ocd i think that there is a larger convo about nature vs nurture that may be paired with my perspective of doubling here. like how each double pairs as a nature vs nurture perspective
- a feeling of neurodivergence from the narrator that is found throughout the text: i think if i were to add this to my perception of doubling and nature vs nurture, we have someone who is so at home in nature, that nurture does not effect them the way others do, and thats what makes ghostbird so special in comparison to the other characters she interacts with
- cycles of grief for the world they once knew
- i think that the addition of hypnotism adds to the nature vs nurture discussion because it is a required nurture: it surpasses nurture into manipulation specifically.
- the idea that through a scientific lens, the narrator is trying to make sense through her own perspective. i know that later books impact this perspective in an interesting way, especially as you know more about the crawler and the writings. i think it almost makes this section boring because instead of adding clarity it adds character analysis for our main character.
- although this stretch of exposition is kinda boring, it unfortunately has a lot of fodder for my nature vs nurture argument. i like that i have titles for the doubling and foiling that happens in this novel: the real world and area x, where the outside world is nurture and society, and area x is truly wild nature, without inihabition.
- i keep stressing how natural area x is, but when we get to the human mutation to animals it feels almost like nature is forcibly nurturing, like whatever alien thing is here is forcing their own nurturing, is forcing a change. this lens specifically is very specific
TO DO
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