How High We Go in the Dark #BookReview
Book: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Genre: Dystopian / Science Fiction / Speculative
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publication date: 2022
Source: e-audiobook borrowed from the library
Summary: It’s 2030 and a new pandemic is released. Global warming melted away the only protection that humanity had from an ancient virus that transformed organs from one to another, causing bizarre and terrifying deaths, especially in children.
How High We Go in the Dark is told as connected short stories, each from a different point of view. In the audiobook, each chapter is read by a different narrator.
As readers, we learn a different aspect of how humanity copes with this new pandemic from each new story. The stories are spread over time, so we experience things at the height of the pandemic and in the aftermath.
Thoughts: I’m not always a fan of short stories, but this book worked for me. The connection of the big pandemic event and the impacts of global warming pulled it all together. I also got a kick out of recognizing the occasional “Easter egg” where a small detail in a story hearkened back to a previous story. In the audio format, the change in narrators helped me understand that we were in a new time and place.
In my review of Day by Michael Cunningham, I asked for recommendations for pandemic novels. Alana of Ramblin’ with AM recommended this book to me. Thanks! She wrote about her experience of reading it here.
The genre is clearly dystopian with science fiction elements, but neither of those words fully capture what I felt as I reached the end. I want to call it “imaginative.”
Have you read this book? What did you think?