San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Weirder yet even more real
With “Hummingbird Salamander,” Jeff VanderMeer moves away from the bizarre sciencefiction worlds of his “Southern Reach” trilogy and his 2019 novel “Dead Astronauts.” In his new book, he enters the realm of crime, noir and mysteries while retaining his signature topics of environmentalism, climate change and shifting identities and realities.
Jane Smith, who works as a security consultant, receives an envelope with a note and a key from a bartender with no explanation. The key opens a storage unit that contains a taxidermied hummingbird and a few clues that lead her to a truly rare, and also taxidermied, salamander.
The envelope Jane received came from Silvina Vilcapampa, who is dead. Silvina’s family owns international businesses, but she embarked on her own and became an ecoterrorist as well as someone who left behind many questions — and a lot of angry people.
Jane’s discoveries put her on a collision course with Silvina’s past and a collection of villains who want to destroy her. Unfortunately, there are too many things that Jane ignores, and whatever is happening is much larger than what she could have imagined. With her life in shambles, her safety constantly compromised, her family at risk and no clear answers, Jane doubles down and keeps looking into the mystery, which might cost her everything she has.
Jane is a likable but unreliable narrator. She makes up names for people and sometimes introduces them twice, offering different descriptions for them each time. She creates an uncertain atmosphere that permeates the narrative. In a way, “Hummingbird Salamander” becomes a series of questions. VanderMeer created a fastpaced, cinematic story and filled it with shady figures, cryptic messages and puzzling encounters that often end in violence.
The novel echoes some of VanderMeer’s previous work, including his use of lighthouses and the natural world, but it signals a step in a new direction, one that’s both weirder and closer to our reality. It’s also a novel that brilliantly explores the way we abuse the Earth and how we “have built so many mirrors, there are no windows to shatter.”
At once enigmatic and fast, obscure and brilliant, “Hummingbird Salamander” celebrates nature while inviting us to contemplate the effects of contamination, pandemics and other crises, and how none of them make us “even blink anymore.”