Review: Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer

Blurb:

The surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series―and the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

When the Southern Reach trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestseller list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.

And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast―before Area X was called Area X―had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?

Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. There are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

Review:

At the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County there is… this case. It is, at first blush, rather unassuming. It is a long case, over 15 feet in length, constructed from a dark wood with nothing one might misconstrue as ornamental filigree. It is simple. Unobtrusive. Just long cuts of wood stitched together. The hallway in which it is placed doesn’t evoke any special attention either; in fact, one might assume it isn’t a very important exhibit, since one could so easily just walk right past it. But there is one thing about it that evokes curiosity. As you approach, you will notice that the top of the case is entirely glass. And behind that glass is one of my childhood nightmares:

Peer over the edge of this case and you’ll discover, bathed in unknowable gallons of formaldehyde, an ancient monster—the corpse of a megamouth shark. Within its sickly brown bath, the megamouth stares up at you, unblinking, its massive maw eternally agape. It is, like all dead things, unnaturally still, unsettling still… as if it is waiting. 

Now, I want to be clear, as a child and as an adult I love sharks, but something about this one always gave me pause. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t quite tall enough to look over the edge of the case without tip-toeing, meaning I was always ostensibly face-to-face with this monster if I wished to look at it. I could not view it from a distance. Perhaps it was because the shark had no teeth, only a great, gummy void welcoming its prey into its gullet. Or perhaps it was the eyes, which seemed to follow you no matter where you stood. I always expected it to spring to life, to smack against the glass of its prison, break free, and swallow me whole. The very aura of this dead thing frightened me, and for many trips after my first visit to that museum, I would avoid that wooden box of horrors, skirting by it in a vain attempt to avoid the dead sea monster’s unflinching gaze; knowing that if I looked, surely this would be the time it resurrected.

Reading Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution was like seeing that megamouth shark for the very first time. 

I’d already read (and re-read in some cases) the original three Southern Reach novels (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) by the time I started to see evidence of the fourth Southern Reach novel trickle into VanderMeer’s then-Twitter feed early in 2020, to become a horrifying light at the end of what was soon to become a horrifying, diseased tunnel; and I continued to watch over the coming years as VanderMeer periodically shared fragments of the “three interlocking novellas” that would eventually make up Absolution, steeped in terrified anticipation of what beauty and horror they’d plant in the garden of my mind. And reader, the things that have bloomed…

Absolution—a prequel to 2014’s Annihilation—begins at a distance, as we might view the megamouth’s wooden sarcophagus from the entryway. Old Joe (not his real name) is reading reports of a scientific mission gone wrong, an alligator study gone awry on The Forgotten Coast. He studies the facts of the mission and its aftermath, absorbing their oddities and their conflict, preparing himself to close the distance. This is the first novella: “Dead Town”.

In the second novella—“The False Daughter” (my favorite of the three)—we step toward the megamouth. Now Old Jim is on the Forgotten Coast. He is living in the shadow of Dead Town. He meets with some of the people from his reports, talks to them, pries the missing details from their memory. The investigation continues, and we take one step closer. Another step closer. We run to the case. 

In the third novella—“The First and the Last”—our faces are pressed against the glass. We invite the rebirth of the dead thing.

“Do you have a problem with dead things?” Old Jim asks. 

“Only if they’re coming after me.” 

Absolution is everything I’ve come to love about the writing of Jeff VanderMeer. It is all at once exciting and intriguing, taking on—at first—the texture of the best investigative mystery novels (of which I would count VanderMeer’s own Hummingbird Salamander); and then explodes into gooey, slimy, fetid horror. And yet, even in the most horrific moments Absolution has to offer, there is always an underlying romance and beauty. VanderMeer writes about the environment of The Forgotten Coast and Area X (heavily inspired by VanderMeer’s life in Florida, particularly his explorations of the St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge) the way Peter Benchley writes about the ocean; you can feel the love of the natural world radiate off the page, even when describing the nightmares that inhabit that world. 

The latter third of the book—“The First and the Last”—is a fractured, tortured, brutal experience; and yet, there are moments of peace between the horrors. In one such moment, as our characters wander across a bone-littered beach, I could not help but recall the serene, dreamlike tranquility of Eugene Bracht’s Shore of Oblivion. “The First and the Last” might very well be some of the most dreamlike fiction I’ve ever read. Throughout the sprawling voyage of its characters, VanderMeer breaks down and reshapes reality over and over and over, always unexpectedly finding new ways to disturb our senses the moment we’ve found our equilibrium with the previous state of things (like having a character who loves profanity be suddenly unable to use his favorite swears). I’ve truly never read anything like it. In reading its pages, the megamouth did wake up, did smash through the glass, and did swallow me whole. 

This is a book for those who loved the weirdness of Dead Astronauts, the intrigue of Hummingbird Salamander, and the wonderfully evocative environment of Annihilation; or for those who once stared into the dead eyes of an ancient sea-beast, recoiled in horror, but were inevitably compelled to look again, to see the beauty writ upon its flesh.