Book Club Monday: Annihilation

Author:  Jeff VanderMeer Title: Annihilation Publisher: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux Date Published: 02/04/2014

Read Dates: 10/04/2026- 10/08/2026
Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was my family book club pick for October.

 Annihilation is a single POV science-fiction/eco/nature horror novel. Told through the journal entries of an unnamed narrator (known only as the biologist), it tells about an expedition to the mysterious Area X by a team of four- the biologist, the psychologist, the anthropologist, and the surveyor- as they attempt to uncover what is going on in this area that once contained civilization but has now been overrun by nature. The first expedition returned with reports of an Eden on Earth, but each subsequent expedition met with disaster: they killed themselves, they killed each other, or, in the case of the eleventh expedition, they returned eerily changed and died of cancer weeks later. This twelfth expedition knows only to expect the unexpected, and that's certainly what they find!

I honestly have no idea what I just read, and I cannot wait for the book club meeting where we discuss this one! It was thoroughly weird and, while I have a general idea of what was going on, it leaves the reader with as many questions as it does answers. The biologist admits in her journal entries that she is omitting part of the story and has reason to believe her perspective and understanding of events are skewed, so it makes for a confusing but entertaining read! 

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.