Acceptance: Sometimes Difficult to Accept

Jeff Vandermeer’s Acceptance completes the Southern Reach Trilogy with detailed descriptions and complex sentences, sucking us into a world that’s changing. Here is where we expect answers, demand resolutions to the why those changes occur and what will happen to the major characters: the Biologist, Control, the Lighthouse Keeper, the Psychologist, and her assistant, Grace. Yet here is where we find true changes; changes in perspective on the landscapes of Area X, and changes in point of view.

The first book, Annihilation, is written from the first-person point of view of the Biologist on the twelfth expedition into Area X. Authority, the second book, is written from the limited third-person point of view of Control as he struggles in his new position as Director of Southern Reach. As changes have occurred within Area X, the border expanding, the wildlife being absorbed and mutated, so do changes in perspective occur within the book. Acceptance includes multiple points of view: the Biologist’s first-person perspective AND the third-person limited from Control’s eyes.  Acceptance adds the third-person point of view through the Lighthouse Keeper and we see the Psychologist’s childhood in ground zero of Area X and learn about the strange Science and Séance Brigade through his eyes. But the changes don’t stop there. A second-person point of view is added which observes the Psychologist prior to the twelfth expedition. The unknown voice speaks directly to the Psychologist and we have to wonder who this new speaker is?  We can only assume it is the voice of Area X’s creator, but this is never confirmed. This whole jumping back and forth between different types of viewpoints creates a feeling of unease in the reader and pulls you into the chaos and confusion of those expedition members who came back from Area X different, changed, damage psychologically and physically so that they died in less than a year. All accept for Lowry, who continues his deranged pursuit of conquering Area X from the safe distance of Central…or is it a controlled lab so his own changes can be easily observed?

                The affect is unnerving as we scramble over these changes in point of view, changes in Area X and changes in us, because of the answers we are compelled to seek. Like Control, who clutches Whitby’s terroir report, we seek answers to our questions: Who or what is behind the changes in Area X? What does it mean for humanity? But like the Lighthouse Keeper’s father told him, “Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt.” So we follow the Lighthouse Keeper into the cryptic world of Area X as it impregnates Earth with – we know not what - and are only partially satisfied with the answers.

                Answers, like candy, often leave us with more questions, and though this is true in the world of Jeff Vandermeer’s Acceptance, it is perhaps the most original dystopian I have read in a long time. The writing style, the characters and the plot are compelling and definitely worth the read!

Proper Gauge is Engaging in More Ways Than One

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A Review of Wool: Proper Gauge by Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey continues building the Silo world of Wool in Proper Gauge. We left Sheriff Holston dead with his secret after his “cleaning” of the outside camera lenses in Wool. In Proper Gauge, it is the next day. A day when revelers celebrate the release of tension about who will do the next “cleaning.” They are grateful they didn’t have to clean the lenses, now they can express that joy. While most of the population in the silo are celebrating, Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes are weighted down with grief over the loss of their friend and sheriff, Holston. They also face the grueling task of finding the right person to fill the empty sheriff’s position. This choice is of supreme importance to the mayor, because “Whoever we decide will probably be here long after we’re gone.” Mayor Jahns knows that choosing the right person for sheriff is as important as choosing the right needle for her knitting project. The proper gauge in needles or in people is, not only important, but “critical.”

Deputy Marnes offers three possible candidates for the job, but only recommends one, Juliette Nichols. Juliette, or Jules, was born into a family health practitioners, but she chose a different path. She is content as Mechanical worker in the lowest levels of the silo, which is 144 floors deep, and will probably refuse the position. Mayor Jahns wants to visit these lower levels to “get us a proper gauge of this Juliette” and take time for silent mourning. Both Jahns and Marnes are older people, so the journey is a grueling trek down. Plus they are going against the flow of travelers who are going to the first floor to celebrate the cleaning.

As they travel into the bowels of the silo in search of a new sheriff, the people they pass look to Mayor Jahns with eyes crying, “Keep us going, … Make it so my kids live as long as me. Don’t let it unravel, not just yet.” But Jahns knows it “only [takes] one snip for it all to unravel.” This is a heroic quest to save their people for one more generation and we begin to see the possible threads that might unravel in a segregated society divided by floors. “The silo was mathematically divided into three sections of forty-eight floors each…” with the administrators and white collar workers live on the upper floors of the silo. The workers who keep the silo functional (farmers, electricians, mechanics) are on the lower levels. And smack in the middle is IT with Bernard Holland, whom we instantly dislike, Head of IT. We learn that it’s customary for the Head of IT to approve the Mayor’s choice for sheriff.

The quest for a sheriff also turns into a personal quest for unfulfilled love between our two travelers. It is chance to build on a relationship they both chose to keep professional for years and so, “out of nothing comes something,” has multiple meanings to the plot. But not everything that comes out of this trip is beneficial and the hitches in the overall plot of the whole Wool series becomes more complex.

I still have to give this novella kudos. It continues to keep us interested in the overall series even though it limits the number of character we are exposed to. In this way, the characters are developed into realistically people with pasts and hopes and dreams -even in what we believe is a depressingly limited world. Each peripheral character from one story becomes the main character in the next, so there is still continuity in the storytelling. In fact, our entire knowledge of the silo world of Wool grows with each reading. The rich imagery and smells carry through from the top levels to the “down deep” of the silo, and so do the political struggles over power usage and supplies. It’s still worthwhile, so I’m on to reading, the third book in Hugh Howey’s Wool Series: Casting Off.