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How High We Go in the Dark
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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. 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. "Wondrous, and not just in the feats of imagination, which are so numerous it makes me dizzy to recall them, but also in the humanity and tenderness with which Sequoia Nagamatsu helps us navigate this landscape. . . . This is a truly amazing book, one to keep close as we imagine the uncertain future." —Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
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How High We Go in the Dark is a unique and crafty literary science fiction that utilizes short stories of various characters to create an all-encompassing plot. The author’s writing prose is not only beautiful but also intentional; enabling real emotional responses from the reader. The story is a bleak one, but also a great reminder that we shouldn’t take our lives for granted. Towards the end however, the direction of the plot shifts away from the characters and more towards the broader plot point. While this is normally the exact thing I would like to see in books such as this, the ending lacked the emotional momentum that was so strongly executed in the beginning. Despite that though, I am still happy to have read the book. Nagamatsu’s writing style is absolutely gorgeous and the complexity of interweaving characters is amazingly done. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.
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About Sequoia Nagamatsu
SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU is the author of the National Bestselling novel, "How High We Go in the Dark" (2022) and the forthcoming "Girl Zero" (William Morrow/Harper Collins and Bloomsbury UK), as well as the story collection, "Where We Go When All We Were is Gone" (Black Lawrence Press).
His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, and has been listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading and the Best Horror of the Year. He was educated at Grinnell College (BA) and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (MFA), and he teaches creative writing at Saint Olaf College and the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, their cat Kalahira, their real dog Fenris, and a robot dog named Calvino.
