Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel
The new book’s title suggests apology, repentance and putting things right. It implies that VanderMeer might have set out to provide answers instead of more uncertainties...But against all odds, Absolution is, in large part, just as good as the first three novels. It works for the same reason the others did. It manages, once again, to find that rare balance between revealing (the task of the novel) and revealing too much (the danger horror must avoid). Even when it threatens to settle down into the established pattern of its predecessors, it veers, in its final third, into something entirely more alien and alienating ... Will the whole of Absolution disappoint readers? Sure, but then again, all horror disappoints eventually. It’s VanderMeer’s achievement to show that, when it comes to long-form horror, there’s good disappointment and bad. Absolution could have dragged the series’ many monsters and mysteries into a clarifying light. Instead, it sticks to the shadows, just where the best horror belongs. And while that could vex readers looking for answers, their reward is a good scare.
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The opening sections feature some of VanderMeer’s best writing ... VanderMeer, a noted Borges fan, dwells on the mundane details of Old Jim’s everyday life, aware that the power of the uncanny...lies in its uneasy contrast with the ordinary. Because he writes best in an eloquent but narrow range, however, VanderMeer has trouble shifting between registers, with even his supposedly hardheaded scientists filling their journals with implausible flights of poetry ... As readers of H.P. Lovecraft know well, such stories teeter constantly on the verge of the ridiculous. VanderMeer is usually careful not to risk it, which makes the conclusion of Absolution truly inexplicable. Old Jim’s story is followed by 100 interminable pages from the perspective of James Lowry, the sole survivor of the first expedition into Area X. VanderMeer clearly despises him, and his attempt to write in Lowry’s profane but punishingly monotonous voice destroys any lingering reverberations from the rest of the novel. Admirers of the earlier books can safely skip all but the last three chapters of this section. And yet VanderMeer still deserves to be mentioned alongside Poe, Chesterton and Borges’s other exemplars of the unheimlich, whose confrontation with the uncanny is central to the mission of speculative fiction.
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Given the commercial success of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, its open-ended conclusion, and the sad tendency of science fiction writers to pen unnecessary sequels, fill in timelines, and solve happily unresolved enigmas, it’s easy to imagine a version of Absolution, VanderMeer’s new Southern Reach book, that retroactively diminishes his former accomplishments. Instead, VanderMeer has outdone himself ... Area X does strange things to the bodies, and perhaps more importantly to the consciousness, of deserving and undeserving alike. VanderMeer has similar ambitions; he seeks to broaden his readers’ horizons and expand their sense of the possible. Maddening, haunting, and compelling, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the boundaries of speculative fiction. Just as Lowry finds it difficult to think without his swear words, many readers will find it near impossible to discuss Absolution without superlatives.
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