On Paths Unknown discussion

Here is the second thread, chapters 3 and 4.

The biologist continues to fascinate me. Is she an unreliable narrator, or do we still trust her as readers?

The biologist's attempt to analyze the situation on her way to the lighthouse is really remarkable to me because I find that it works so well. JV here presents a rapid development of several ideas about language, the possible alien nature of the tower, ritual, biology, and intelligence, but it drags down the writing not at all. It is truly integration to the story.

Also noticing the first hint that the outside world is in a state of some sort of ecological disaster here ("media oversaturation about ongoing ecological devastation" and "We had so many other problems.").

I loved him but I didn't need him, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. A ghost bird might be a hawk in one place, a crow in another, depending on context.

Her loss of her husband (in all the ways she lost him) is so sad, and oddly beautiful. (Beautiful because she really loves him.)

I am highlighting pretty much every other paragraph in here. This book is just so deliciously disturbing I don't know what to respond to first.

After lighthouse spoiler: (view spoiler)[The psychologist has thrown a whole new wrench in the unreliable narrator debate. (hide spoiler)] Now we not only have to question the biologist, but she also has to question herself.

It may be clear by now that I am not always good at telling people things they feel they have a right to know...

You think!?! Love it.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "It may be clear by now that I am not always good at telling people things they feel they have a right to know...

You think!?! Love it. .."

I got a big smile when I read that, too. Vandermeer is a master at the metacommentary.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "After lighthouse spoiler: [spoilers removed] Now we not only have to question the biologist, but she also has to question herself.

It may be clear by now that I am not always good at telling peopl..."

Yes. She no longer knows or believes what has happened to her. What is real and what is hypnotic suggestion.

I appreciate this thread. I am curious about the ecological crisis alluded to in the text. Given the protagonists is a biologist, are we presently in 2016 in the throes of such a conflagration? I say this as she is undoubtedly more sensitive and aware than most lay people. Maybe I've inhaled the spores, went native.

You've got to watch those spores :-) (Having read The Sixth Extinction last year, I would have to admit that we are. I do wonder if the reason VanderMeer didn't fill in more detail on that point is that he wanted the reader to ponder that very question.)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "...I do wonder if the reason VanderMeer didn't fill in more detail on that point is that he wanted the reader to ponder that very question.) ..."

I think that's correct. Pick your example of ecological havoc that humans have unleashed, with some implication that maybe there are some additional ones in the world of the trilogy, and contrast that with the pristine wilderness of Area X. Early in the book the biologist writes of Area X "The air was so clean, so fresh, while the world back beyond the border was what it had always been during the modern era: dirty, tired, imperfect, winding down, at war with itself."

She restates this again a little later in book. After this section, I believe, so I'll take it up again there.