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ClareR (6067 KP) rated Absolution in Books

May 30, 2025  
Absolution
Absolution
Jeff VanderMeer | 2024 | Fiction & Poetry, Film & TV, Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
After reading Annihilation, I jumped straight to Absolution - I haven’t read the second and third books, but they’re sat on my kindle!

Annihilation is in three parts: Dead Town (20 years before Area X); The False Daughter (18 months before Area X), which deals with the aftermath of what happened in Dead Town; and The First and Last, the first formal expedition into Area X, 18 months before its creation.

This is a weird and wonderful book: experimental, jam packed with horror and it left me constantly on edge. How on Earth someone can come up with these ideas, I have no idea. I’m certainly glad that Jeff VanderMeer is around and writing novels like this, though!
  
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Sam (74 KP) rated The Possession of Mr Cave in Books

Mar 27, 2019  
The Possession of Mr Cave
The Possession of Mr Cave
Matt Haig | 2019
6
7.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Possession of Mr Cave is the story of a father’s mental breakdown after the tragic loss of many people close to him. Terrence is mentally unwell through the whole novel and is fighting his dead son’s influence on his mind. It’s completely disturbing, surprising and scary.

I’ll start this off by saying that I know that this book wasn’t for me. As I said, the blurb didn’t sound like anything I would usually enjoy reading and I only bought the book because it was by Matt Haig. But just because the book wasn’t for me didn’t stop me from still giving it 3/5.

The Possession of Mr Cave is very Shakespearean which isn’t a surprise coming from Matt Haig, as he has written a few novels inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. This is written as if it is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, so if you do enjoy that sort of thing, the book will be perfect. To begin with, it reminded me a lot of Romeo and Juliet because the novel begins at the end with Terrence Cave explaining that he has killed his daughter, and the novel is a letter to her, retelling exactly how the events led to her death. I did quite like this format, because it meant the suspense rose throughout the whole novel and left me guessing as to why he would kill his own daughter right up until the end.

I’m not the biggest fan of Shakespeare, which is why I feel that this was just not the book for me. Like I said, this reads exactly like a Shakespearean Tragedy, which I think in a way is also why I struggled to get into it. The language seemed clunky and drawn out in places and made it a bit hard to read, as well as Terrence’s conversations with his own mind.

It’s disturbing, and that is exactly what pulled me in. Terrence takes his protectiveness over Bryony too far to the point where I was wondering where his relationship with her was going to lead. I found it upsetting that nobody around Terrence spoke to him about how he was too protective of his daughter, and also how despite everything, nobody took the time to see if Terrence was okay.