Absolution

August 28, 2023
McDermott (The Ninth Hour) unfurls an evocative character study of American women in 1963 Saigon. Newlywed Tricia, a young woman of blue-collar stock whose lawyer husband works for Naval Intelligence, is out of her element among the socialites of her new milieu. She’s mentored by the sophisticated Charlene, an oil magnate’s wife who hosts martini lunches and devises altruistic if misguided aid schemes (one fundraiser involves selling Barbie dolls dressed in traditional Vietnamese garb). Tricia grows fond of Rainey, Charlene’s little girl, and much of the book unfolds in present day letters and conversations between Tricia and Rainey, the younger woman having contacted Tricia after meeting an American Vietnam War veteran who knew her and Charlene. McDermott finds her groove when she has Tricia reexamining her time in Saigon, where the women around her slipped into prescribed roles without questioning their submissiveness. A poignant conclusion shows how Charlene supported Tricia back in the ’60s after Tricia’s miscarriage (“I did not want to be the sort of woman who had a miscarriage. Didn’t want to be a part of that simpering sorority, a keeper of that shameful secret,” she narrates). In McDermott’s powerful story, the quest for absolution falls just beyond her characters’ grasp. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Company.

Starred review from August 5, 2024
Nebula winner VanderMeer adds an eerie and evocative coda to his Southern Reach horror-fantasy trilogy with this prequel, set two decades prior and illuminating a fatal expedition into what would come to be known as Area X off the southeast coast of a bureaucracy-crippled country. In three discrete narratives told through multiple perspectives, VanderMeer explores the failure of human intelligence to deal with incomprehensible alienness. The first section chronicles the well-funded but doomed scientific expedition into the Forgotten Coast through former spy Old Jim’s reading of a long-lost Seance & Science Brigade diary. The second traces Old Jim’s tormented attempts to carry out a mind-controlled black op for “Jack,” his sinister former partner and now handler. The third and by far the most opaque section follows Lowry, a soldier, through a tragic drugged trip across the Border on orders from Jack, now revealed as a rogue Control agent. Drawing heavily on bioresearch and scientific extrapolations, this foray into the human cost of bureaucratic paranoia and the abandonment of logic to “hope, prayers, and blessings” provokes, mystifies, and challenges readers in turn. VanderMeer’s horrifying declaration of the impossibility of knowing the other is a knockout.

August 15, 2024
VanderMeer extends his Southern Reach trilogy with a deeper exploration of worlds both creepy and bureaucratic. The charm (and frustration) of VanderMeer's epic saga about the mysterious Area X is how much information is withheld, making the reader unsure of where they stand until the story explodes into uncanny and horrifying terrain. In that regard, the fourth entry in the series sticks to type, roughly focused on events preceding and following the earlier books. The opening sections concern Old Jim, a Central investigator researching the first expeditions by biologists into the Forgotten Coast, which involved the introduction of alligators and unsettling encounters with the rabbits first met inAuthority (2014), as well as a mysterious Rogue that may be working in league with a particularly aggressive alligator nicknamed the Tyrant. Later chapters focus on Lowry, an investigator on a later expedition into the region, observing his colleagues' numbers rapidly whittled down as the malevolent Tyrant emerges. Lowry is profane--few books published in the past 10 years have a higher f-bomb-to-page ratio--and highly drugged, elements that enliven the story in two ways. They convey the contempt and frustration with institutions that has been a hallmark of the Southern Reach series; more ingeniously, they underscore the latter chapters' surrealistic, psychedelic brand of horror, which helps sell some more grotesque incidents Lowry becomes a part of. Indeed, Lowry's sections feature some of the most vivid writing in the entire series, sinuous and delightfully weird. Does VanderMeer resolve lingering questions from the previous novels? Not really. But the main theme of the trilogy was always unknowability--untrustworthy leaders, reckless wildlife, and complicated humans are his constant focus, and here he cannily balances the strangeness with the terror of confronting it. And it's fair to suspect the terror will go on: As he writes, "Nothing in the end could placate Area X." An extension of a genre-busting narrative, maintaining and complicating its vibes.

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Starred review from August 1, 2024
With this prequel to the best-selling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, 2014), VanderMeer lures readers back into the hallucinatory clutches of Area X, an anomalous coastal region in the United States. Three linked stories explore the years leading up to the Area X Event, weaving deftly in and out of the time line established by the trilogy, obliquely referring to key characters and moments that will reward careful readers. "Dead Town" takes place 20 years before Area X, as Old Jim, a Central agent turned analyst, reconstructs events from Central's piecemeal files concerning a team of biologists surveying the Forgotten Coast as they fall prey to an uncanny figure called the Rogue. The next section, "The False Daughter," takes place 18 months before Area X, as a reactivated Old Jim investigates the Rogue while mourning his daughter's disappearance. The final section, "The First and the Last," follows the inaugural expedition into Area X from the profanity-laden point of view of anthropologist Lowry. No character escapes with their sanity intact, though their madness may reveal greater truths that have far-reaching implications for the series. Still, VanderMeer understands that the mystery is the point, and, as told in beautiful prose infused with bizarre and disturbing images, Area X remains as fascinating and unknowable as ever.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.