Emily M’s Reviews > Authority > Status Update

“He understood why the biologist liked this part of the world, how you could lose yourself here in a hundred ways. How you could even become someone very different from who you thought you were…The frenetic need to analyze…fell away from him - and with it the weight and buzz of human interaction and interference.”

“He would recognize her anywhere by now. Still in her expedition clothes…And Grace, in three-quarter profile there in front of her, body taut with anticipation. This false return, this corrupted reunion. This end of everything. For [redacted] trailed plumes of emerald dust and behind her the nature of the world was changing, filling with a brightness, the rain losing its depth, its darkness.”

“‘What should I do now?’ ‘I’m the prisoner,’ the biologist said to him from her cot, facing the wall. ‘Why should I tell you anything?’ ‘Because I’m trying to help you.’ ‘Are you? Or are you just trying to help yourself?’ He had no answer to that. ‘A normal person might give up…’ ‘Would you?’ he asked. ‘No. But I’m not normal.’”

"He wasn't sure he knew the difference anymore between what he was meant to find and what he'd dug up on his own. A tower could become a pit. Questioning a biologist could become a trap. An expedition member might even return thirty years later in the form of a voice whispering strange nothings in his ear."

“The note on the biologist was the most extensive… ‘Not a very good biologist. In a traditional sense. Empathetic more towards environments than people. Forgets the reasons she went, who is paying her salary. But becomes embedded to an extraordinary extent. Would know Area X better than I do from almost the first moment…What would she be in Area X? A signal? A flare? Or invisible? Exploit.’”

“Q: What did you leave at the empty lot?
…
A: Leave? Like what? A necklace with a crucifix? A confession?
Q: No.
A: Well, why don’t you tell me what you thought I might’ve left there?
Q: Your manners?”

“Analysis by Southern Reach scientists of the most recent samples, taken six years ago…showed no trace of human-created toxicity remained in Area X…No heavy metals…No plastics. Which was impossible…Not a single sample had ever shown any irregularities: normal cell structure…But he had seen a few strange comments…that when they looked away from the microscope, the samples changed.”

“Same interrogation room. Same worn chairs…Same Ghost Bird. Or was it?The residue of an unfamiliar gleam or glint in her eyes…She seemed both softer and harder-edged than before. ‘If someone seems to have changed from one session to another, make sure you haven’t changed instead.’ A warning from his mother…delivered as if she’d upended a box of spy-advice fortune cookies and chosen one at random.”

“On the plane…he’d had strange thoughts about the inhabitants of those coastal town to either side of Area X being somehow mutated under the skin…These were the kinds of thoughts you had to both keep at bay and fuel…in Control’s experience they reflected something from the subconscious, some instinct”

Hello, ‘Shadow over Innsmouth’ reference!

In the director/psychologist’s office:
“a square etching of the lighthouse from the 1880s; a black and white photograph of two men and a girl framed by the lighthouse; a long…watercolor panorama showing miles of reeds…No real hints of the personal, no pictures of the director with her Native American mother…or with anyone who might matter in her life.”

But as with biologist - this IS what matters, and is personal!