Review: Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer

A quirk of reading a book digitally is that the ending can really sneak up on you. At one point, I checked the progress bar and was shocked to discover there was barely 5% of the book remaining. Well, I guess that was the climax, I thought to myself. That moment encapsulates the lacklustre experience of reading this novel.

The story is told through five pairs of eyes. We already know how two of these tales end; the fates of the Psychologist and the Lighthouse Keeper are revealed at the end of Book 1. Although their ends are fated, the unfolding of their journeys is not without merit. Both characters grapple with questions of belonging and identity and purpose, and the relationship between the gay ex-Priest and the half-indigenous child brimming with curiosity was sweet.

Through the other characters we follow three paths of responding to the alien world of Area X: to leave and seek a full life beyond, or to accept the strangeness of it all, either through a slow Understanding and ultimate relinquishing of the self, or through a bright burst of faith and acceptance. These journeys clash with my own epistemology; the characters discover scientific knowledge is fallible, that what matters and is knowable comes from Being. I’m not opposed to reading works that challenge me philosophically and emotionally, but I didn’t find Vandermeer’s case to be convincing. Setting a story in a fantastical setting means the world can work according to any logic — or lack of logic — you want it to. Some of the other Goodreads reviews complain about the dearth of answers to the mysteries of the world Vandermeer introduces in the trilogy, and I think this is really the root that these other readers are grasping at: Vandermeer rejects the material world and the human ability to conceptualize it. If you approach the world scientifically (as his characters start out doing), it is a nihilistic and unsettling worldview, for all that the novel ends with what appears to be hope, peace, and acceptance.

I am curious to what extent the author has really found a sense of acceptance for the philosophy he develops in Acceptance. My hunch is that the nihilism of it troubles him too. First, this third instalment, having set up the New Frontier in book 1 and having burned down the legitimacy of the Old World in book 2, meanders without clear aim. The three characters from the later timeline find themselves in Area X but without clear goals, and just wander about until it eventually ends. Second, these first three books were published in quick succession all in 2014, with a surprise fourth book coming out only in 2024. As disappointed as I am with this trilogy, I have queued up the fourth one out of curiosity for how the author revisits or revises these themes after the turmoil of the late 2010s and early 2020s.