The novel “Acceptance” by Jeff VanderMeer was published for the first time in 2014. It’s the third book of the Southern Reach trilogy and follows “Authority“.
Area X is expanding transforming other portions of territory into somewhat alien places. The Southern Reach is in chaos and Control attempts another expedition with Ghost Bird. Together, the two of them go into Area X until they reach the lighthouse that seems essential to get answers, but will they be enough?
Many years earlier, the lighthouse was a normal place and Saul Evans had become its guardian. A former preacher, he’s looking for a serenity he’s missing following traumatic events. The new beginning is also marked by his friendship with Gloria, a little girl who lives nearby. Complications of various kinds threaten to wreak havoc in Saul’s life again.
The first two novels of the Southern Reach trilogy offered two very different but somewhat complementary narrative structures. With “Acceptance” Jeff VanderMeer seems to want to mix at least in part the different types of contents to reach some conclusion by adding a further subplot set in the period in which Area X appeared. The result is a series of characters who offer different points of view and different assessments of the mystery at the center of the whole trilogy, and more than ever their perceptions are what matters.
“Acceptance” takes place again in Area X, in part after the events told in “Authority”. Having got to know at least some characters in the previous novels, the feeling in reading this final novel is different, but within this anomaly there’s still the sens that it’s really alien. The end of the trilogy goes back to the beginning of the mystery by including a sort of prequel among the subplots. Many moments between these two extremes are developed through different subplots that follow different characters. It’s one of this novel’s specific characteristics that leads to the creation of further intertwining and cross-references.
In the end, the impression on the great story developed throughout the trilogy is of a case of style over substance. There’s a set of narrative elements that has become increasingly twisted and obscure to seem profound. The parts that indicate some answers give a been-there-done-that feeling, but that’s not a surprise. In fact, this has been true since the first novel, in which you could guess certain inspirations.
The characters can give a greater satisfaction because the subplots follow pairs of protagonists who can help some dig from a psychological point of view. In the case of the Control and Ghost Bird’s subplot, there’s a direct continuation of the second novel. The use of pairs allows Jeff VanderMeer to offer conversations in which the various protagonists offer their feelings and perceptions, even using an unusual second-person narration, without anything happening.
All this may be enough if you’re interested in character-oriented stories, because it’s the only way to feel some tension during the novel. Otherwise, the story can honestly become uninteresting to the point of being boring. “Authority” already left me perplexed, and I honestly decided to read “Acceptance” in order to complete the trilogy, but the impression it gave me was to have stressed the characteristics that in the previous novels seemed of little interest to me.
In essence, in “Acceptance” Jeff VanderMeer put together the various inner journey paths of characters who already appeared in the previous novels adding more of them. Due to the setting inside Area X, the final tone is closer to “Annihilation” than to “Authority”, but once again the author developed a novel differently than the previous ones. For this reason, the readers’ reactions were very diverse, and that makes it difficult to understand who might like this novel. In my opinion, more than ever you might like it if you’re looking for stories of inner experiences without the need for explanations on what’s really going on.
