Book Review: How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu
A global pandemic crashes the economy, devastates society, and leads to interstellar colonization. If only.
William Morrow, 2022, 304 pages
For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague-a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.
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 resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
This novel about a virus that quickly spreads around the world, killing millions and reshaping civilization, seems very much like something written during COVID. Not a direct allegory, certainly, but the mood was not so much "post-apocalyptic" as "pre-Crash." Released from the Arctic due to global warming, the "shapeshifter plague" mutates its victims organs, turning hearts into lungs and pancreases into fingers. What follows is really a series of interconnected short stories more than a novel.
How High We Go in the Dark reads like other Japanese SF novels, though I believe Sequoia Nagamatsu wrote it in English originally. These are slice-of-life stories about the world after the plague. Secondary characters in one chapter become the main character in the next. There is the doctor who first uncovered Patient Zero in Siberia. The man who works at a "euthanasia park" where dying children are given a final send-off on a rollercoaster. The scientist who accidentally creates an intelligent talking pig. Some of the stories are just bizarre, like the doctor who has a singularity (literally, a miniature black hole) form in his head like a tumor. This leads to humanity's first interstellar colonization mission, where the crew will experience a few years of subjective travel, but receive messages from an Earth on which thousands of years have passed.
This book has won much acclaim in a short time for its literariness and its humanity, but while some individual stories were imaginative and touching, overall I found the effort to be not all that interesting. I've read plenty of plague books before, and I've read other speculative post-apocalyptic novels. The bizarre touches in this one - euthanasia parks and funerary corporation scrip and black holes in heads - were interesting, but the work as a whole was just a string of character-focused short stories without a central plot, just a moving timeline.
It's speculative fiction in the vein of Ursula Le Guin or Margaret Atwood with a Japanese flavor.
My complete list of book reviews.
William Morrow, 2022, 304 pages
For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague-a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.
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 resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
This novel about a virus that quickly spreads around the world, killing millions and reshaping civilization, seems very much like something written during COVID. Not a direct allegory, certainly, but the mood was not so much "post-apocalyptic" as "pre-Crash." Released from the Arctic due to global warming, the "shapeshifter plague" mutates its victims organs, turning hearts into lungs and pancreases into fingers. What follows is really a series of interconnected short stories more than a novel.
How High We Go in the Dark reads like other Japanese SF novels, though I believe Sequoia Nagamatsu wrote it in English originally. These are slice-of-life stories about the world after the plague. Secondary characters in one chapter become the main character in the next. There is the doctor who first uncovered Patient Zero in Siberia. The man who works at a "euthanasia park" where dying children are given a final send-off on a rollercoaster. The scientist who accidentally creates an intelligent talking pig. Some of the stories are just bizarre, like the doctor who has a singularity (literally, a miniature black hole) form in his head like a tumor. This leads to humanity's first interstellar colonization mission, where the crew will experience a few years of subjective travel, but receive messages from an Earth on which thousands of years have passed.
This book has won much acclaim in a short time for its literariness and its humanity, but while some individual stories were imaginative and touching, overall I found the effort to be not all that interesting. I've read plenty of plague books before, and I've read other speculative post-apocalyptic novels. The bizarre touches in this one - euthanasia parks and funerary corporation scrip and black holes in heads - were interesting, but the work as a whole was just a string of character-focused short stories without a central plot, just a moving timeline.
It's speculative fiction in the vein of Ursula Le Guin or Margaret Atwood with a Japanese flavor.
My complete list of book reviews.