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amiewhittemore 's review for:
Hummingbird Salamander
by Jeff VanderMeer
While not my favorite VanderMeer novel, it was quite gripping. Weird without weirdness feeling like a spectacle, a performance, a layer on what is essential to this novel. "Jane" is a fascinating narrator, sharp yet blunt, missing the points just as she connects them, as she is one that connects. It is interesting to read across VanderMeer's work, to see how his sentences change shape, how his relation to lyricism shifts. Jane is not lyrical, not like the biologist in Annihilation.
I also, in reading so much of his work see a ethos of transformation: the only way humans are going to stop being so shitty is to be less human. Which is both terrible and beautiful. Hopeful and painful. But, his books often posit, the only way through this misery we've created on the earth. Here's hoping we can transform as much as is required.
I also, in reading so much of his work see a ethos of transformation: the only way humans are going to stop being so shitty is to be less human. Which is both terrible and beautiful. Hopeful and painful. But, his books often posit, the only way through this misery we've created on the earth. Here's hoping we can transform as much as is required.