VanderMeer writes in the "weird sci-fi" genre, but the weirdest thing about this novel is that it lies to you. Constantly. He leaves gaps in the story that he then fills in later, which completely changes everything about what you've been reading. It creates a kind of literary vertigo that is extremely compelling. He goes even farther in the second book of the series, but the real treat is in the surprise of it happening in the first one.
THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY - NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC
For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border - an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.
Is it a Bildungsroman? Not exactly. Is it a moral or philosophical treatise? Sort of. Is it a political discourse? Occasionally. I've read this book before (back in college) and it was a very different experience re-reading it. When you're young, the first half of the book is compelling. When you're older, it's the second half that resonates the most.
The Glass Bead Game is an ultra-aesthetic game which is played by the scholars, creamed off in childhood and nurtured in elite schools, in the province of Castalia. The Master of the Glass Bead Game, Joseph Knecht, holds the most exalted office in Castalia. He personifies the detachment, serenity and aesthetic vision which reward a life dedicated to perfection of the intellect. But can, indeed should, man live isolated from hunger, family, children, women, in a perfect world where passions are tamed by meditation, where academic discipline and order are paramount? This is Herman Hesse’s great novel. It is a…
Another book I read long ago and have finally come back to. There is something about The Talisman that is haunting and heartbreaking, even though the story itself doesn't really take that path. I wasn't as impressed with the much later sequel, but I'm glad the original still holds up for me.
Twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer braves the mysterious dangers of the Territories, a surreal parallel world, in his quest--across the United States-for the Talisman, the only hope for his dying mother and for his own survival.
