A beautiful exploration of how we move on from devastation and how the ripple effects stay with us
—Amanda Khong, Bookish Brews
Bookish Brews Snapshot
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
In intricately connected stories, spanning hundreds of years, humanity struggles to rebuild itself after climate disaster in heartfelt, profound, and strange ways.
🌊 Climate Fiction 🌏 East Asian Rep 😭 Emotional 📕 Literary Fiction
- Genre: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction
Book Review
Compassionate, beautiful, bizarre, introspective, human, challenging
Grief, loss, and pain are unavoidable pieces of the human experience, but how we react to them are all unique in our own ways. I recently read How High We Go in the Dark and it’s a beautiful exploration on how we move on after the unthinkable happens. I found it particularly beautiful the way that this story emphasized how humans find the most fascinating and increasingly bizarre ways to cope with the trauma.
In a series of interconnected short stories, Nagamatsu spends time focusing on people. After a virus sweeps through the world causing mass devastation, How High We Go in the Dark gives us a glimpse into how we move on. Through the strange and heartwrenching moments we get the privilege of sharing with these characters, we see the virus sweep through the world in the background. We are reminded that life doesn’t stop, despite everything that it puts us through. We are forced to see humanity within devastation.
Dealing with grief and moving on from difficult events is such a difficult task and no two people handle it the same way. In the midst of despair and difficult times, we’re forced to become creative in the ways in which we are mentally capable of handling it. The coping methods of the characters are absolutely bizarre, but a beautiful reminder that regardless of how we process our grief, that it’s completely valid, as long as it works for us. A compelling reminder of how far we will go to usher ourselves off to death in peace.
A true piece of brilliance in How High We Go in the Dark is the intricate connectedness between each story. It isn’t that each story spawns directly off of each other, but rather an implication that all of our stories are interconnected. The way that a crisis affects some of us may be different than how it affects others, but it affects us nonetheless. Circling widely around what we might expect to be the main plot of the story, Nagamatsu centering the people on the outskirts. Those whose lives have changed from the virus in inexplicable ways, but were not necessarily integral to saving the world. But perhaps saving the world happens in their own ways.
How High We Go in the Dark is a refreshing science fiction story that dives deep into human emotion in exciting and creative ways. I found myself highly emotional over strangeness as we travel through the decades, centuries, and even millennia in a story about humanity.
