Hardcover, 304 pages
English language
Published Jan. 18, 2022 by William Morrow.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.
Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a …
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.
Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
A series of bleak, gritty glimpses of what's in store for us over the next few decades.
The tone is lightened a bit here and there with injections of optimism, but I think it works against itself a little when the optimism feels unwarranted.
The way that the characters from the different stories are linked reminds me a bit of Cloud Atlas (although I only saw the movie (sorry)).
If I had known ahead of time what the structure and focus of this book was, I probably wouldn't have read it. That would have been my loss.
"How High We Go In the Dark" is a series of interconnected short stories set in the same world. This is not my favorite structural style: I prefer to follow a set of characters from beginning to end. Nagamatsu, though, has a rare talent for sketching out characters you can quickly attach to. I felt sorrowful every time I reached the end of a chapter and had to say goodbye.
In this way, the structure was a good fit for the world itself, and the story the author wanted to tell: one focused on death, loss, and how it transforms us. With some frequency, leaving a character at the end of their chapter meant watching them die.
This is one the most …
If I had known ahead of time what the structure and focus of this book was, I probably wouldn't have read it. That would have been my loss.
"How High We Go In the Dark" is a series of interconnected short stories set in the same world. This is not my favorite structural style: I prefer to follow a set of characters from beginning to end. Nagamatsu, though, has a rare talent for sketching out characters you can quickly attach to. I felt sorrowful every time I reached the end of a chapter and had to say goodbye.
In this way, the structure was a good fit for the world itself, and the story the author wanted to tell: one focused on death, loss, and how it transforms us. With some frequency, leaving a character at the end of their chapter meant watching them die.
This is one the most depressing novels I've ever read, but it also deeply creative, empathetic, hopeful, and beautiful. It was satisfying seeing the strands from earlier chapters weave their way through the later ones. In a lesser writer's hands, this novel would be unbearable, but in Nagamatsu's, it becomes something hard to bear, yet worth bearing.
