We all rot . . . some earlier than others

kw: book reviews, fantasy, self-discovery

I took a few days after reading to mull it over. Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer is like no other book I've read. Three people: an obsessed man, his sister, his lover; none really understanding the other, but frequently thinking they do. Their names: Duncan and Janice Shriek, and Mary Sabon.

The narrative is purveyed as the sister's memoirs, annotated by her brother. The three protagonists each reach prominence and fame, one after the other, the (ex-)lover last, eclipsing—yea, annihilating—the other two.

And what of the milieu? The city Ambergris: let that name roll around in your head, and grow into dread of what is to come. Rotted squid from whale stomachs? Verily, and Duncan is Jonah. His obsession is exploring, and gradually assimilating, his city's underworld.

Ambergris is a rotten, rotting city, underlain by vast caves filled with mysterious fungi tended by even-more mysterious aboriginals. In the book's denouement, an invisible city is seen to overlay the visible Ambergris, but in the end, only our three protagonists see it, to very different reactions. Duncan, who produces magic spectacles that enable seeing the unseen, expects to be transformed, not to die. Janice's fate is ambiguous, with a whisper of hope. Mary's is doom.

OK, what's going on here? To a genuine cynic, Duncan is Everyman: nobody sees what he sees, and when they seem to see, they misunderstand, often in a most destructuve way; all go through existence alone, and in the book's motto, "Nobody makes it out." Duncan's perspective is similar to Jeremiah's in his bible books: never wrong, never believed, dragged hither and thither by those more powerful (nearly everyone else). A more Pollyanna-ish perspective: things tend to work out, most people mean well most of the time, and the signs of rot seen all about us could well be only a temporary condition. This last is Janice's view, as the cynic's is Mary's.

Another view entirely: the visible fungus and mold throughout the story are simply the visible expression of the corrupt nature of all the people as depicted in their actions. No heroes are found, and even Duncan's expected transformation is to be accomplished by being overtaken and replaced by fungus. Taken to far, and this is an echo of Camus, who concluded that the noblest act is suicide. I say, nuts to that!