April 05 2026, 16:13

Annihilation

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

First published: 2014

I don’t reread books in general, just as I don’t rewatch films. It’s not an impulse I have. I'm not a comfort reader. There are far too many things in the world that I’m yet to read or watch, and the older I get the more I feel that time is speeding up, so it needs to be a strong gut feeling for me to go back.

With Annihilation, I remembered reading it in 2017, before the film came out, and I remembered the excitement and awe I felt in the details of Area X, and how the story’s central mystery captivated me. I wanted to read it again as a writer. I wanted to understand the techniques that made it work.

Five people are chosen by the Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, to travel to Area X, a mysterious coastal land somewhere in the United States sealed off from the outside world. Each has an area of expertise—biologist, psychologist, surveyor, anthropologist and linguist. In their training, they are told not to reveal their names to each other, and the secret mission is to find a previously established basecamp and investigate the area with their various skills. It quickly dawns on them that they have been deceived about the nature of Area X.

The first thing I noticed was how rich the description was. It’s written in first person from the perspective of the biologist, so she knows the names of all the vegetation and spots the patterns in nature, and she is the first to be suspicious of what’s happening biologically in Area X. The mystery is deepened further by her backstory, which she reveals gradually, and the weird power dynamics playing out in her team. VanderMeer’s economy of storytelling is exemplary. Major events are described matter-of-factly through the biologist’s studious gaze. She is the purest scientist in the team, and her ability to see clearly the group’s dramas makes for a lean, fast-paced read.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot. It’s become on second reading one of may all-time favourite novels. It’s inspirational how so little prose can communicate so much about a character’s inner life while they undergo cataclysmic events in their outer environment. There are many ingenious plot seeds that flower into weighty moments later in the story—the journals each character is asked to write in, the tower going into the ground—if you read it, you’ll know. Read it!

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