A Genre-bending twisty thriller

Dealing with the darkest recesses of the human psyche, My Annihilation probably isn’t a read for everyone. 
“Turn this page, and you may give up your entire life” is how the first chapter of My Annihilation opens. And to a certain extent, these lines ring with truth as the reader proceeds with the novel - now that you’re in the thick of it, you might as well seek some answers to what it means to have one’s mind shrunk and stretched until one can no longer discern the difference between fabricated memories and real ones.

References to Jung and  Freud point out that the novel is a psychological exploration of the shadow self, a Jungian term referring to those aspects of personality traits that are hard to accept, and mostly kept hidden, therefore becoming one of the many reasons for repressed mental perversion.

The novel explores themes like where the humanness, if it is to be found, could reside in a mind that is prone to criminality. What makes a killer? Does childhood trauma always result in depravity? What are memories, after all? And how far are they sometimes removed from the real truth? Can a human brain be manipulated through hypnosis using someone else’s memories making it appear like one's own?

My Annihilation is a genre-bending twisty revenge story at heart, but the structure, format (manuscripts, unprinted files & articles), setting and style, Nakamura uses to tell the story, leaves the reader baffled and in want of answers. I’m interested in philosophy based on human consciousness, mind and awareness, and social and mental constructs, so I found this book quite the page-turner, but it did leave me wondering about a few things. And by the end of the novel, my brain did feel a little close to being chewed and spat out. 

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