Continuing on from last time I made my way through the rest of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach novels, finishing up Authority, Acceptance, and Absolution. VanderMeer is at his best within Area X, and his workplace drama and detective narrative is disappointing by contrast. Absolution comes to us a decade after the original trilogy, and my take-away is that there is a fine line between leaving enough unsaid to create the illusion of a complete but mysterious world, and simply blasting out a lot of fraying threads that do not appear to be weavable into a coherent whole. Too much here gives the appearance not of a mystery that is left tastefully unsolved, but rather of authorial flailing.
I picked up Contact, of which previously I had only seen the film (a long time favourite). It’s very enjoyable and mostly well-written, but I cannot help feel the presence of the authorial avatar who will not shut up about the folly of evangelicalism, or the evils of television advertising.