Annihilation

I’ve never quite read something like this. The most similar book I can name is Do android’s dream of electric sheep? And I can’t quite pinpoint why. One characteristic of this read that I found interesting was the coldness of the protagonist. We never know her name, and she slowly starts to reveal her personal life to the reader. I like the fact that we never find about the character’s names, it makes everything even weirder and creepier. This also parallels with how her opinions on her husband change. She thinks he is shallow in the beginning, but discovers that there was an inner life to him by reading his journal. I didn’t know if this counted as horror, since I wasn’t scared for most of the time I was reading this piece. As it went along, it became scarier and scarier. When she found the human cells in animals. The horror/thriller of this book lies within the conspiratorial and biological elements. The supernatural being the entirety of area x, its mysteries and what happened to the previous expeditions. 

One thing the protagonist in annihilation has in common with previous horror pieces I have read, is her obsession with tidal pools. Most of the readings we’ve gone through in class deal with a character’s obsession with the forbidden, tidal pools aren’t quite forbidden, but her obsession with them makes her reclusive and kind of antisocial. 

The ending was kind of confusing, but unconventional. She decides to stay in Area X, looking for whatever has remained of her husband. It’s unconventional because she willingly stays knowing her expedition partners died, and she could die by a fatal infection. Although she is already infected by the spores. Overall this was a thrilling read, very “new weird” coated in that same kind of mystery we saw in the movie “Under the skin”.