How High We Go in the Dark

How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. It will make you weep; it will give you hope and destroy you at the same time. 5 stars.

I meant to read at least ten other books before this one, but when I sat down to check out the first few pages, I just kept reading straight through to the end. The world building style reminded me of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas in that it brought seemingly unrelated stories together woven through with finely connected threads. Each segment has an expertly introduced setting and characters of its own, and the writer brings us into harmony with them all, as well as with the work as a whole.

The ending may not appeal to everyone, and did not quite fully appeal to me, but it works in the context of the book, and I enjoyed the skill with which Nagamatsu delivered it despite being a little alienated by the direction it went.

This book is worth every minute.

"How High We Go In the Dark" erzählt die Zukunft der Menschheit mit einer ganz besonderen Prämisse: Ein urzeitliches Virus taut aus dem Permafrost Sibiriens auf und zieht um die Welt - nicht so schnell wie in den letzten Jahren Corona, aber genauso gründlich und viel tödlicher. Anstatt nun aber einen wilden Technothriller zu inszenieren, entscheidet sich Autor Sequoia Nagamtasu dafür, den Umgang der Menschen mit dem allgegenwärtigen Tod und der Trauer in den Blick zu nehmen: Er zeichnet Jahrzehnte, in denen die globale Gesellschaft den Umgang mit dem Tod in den Mittelpunkt rückt. Aus Platzmangel werden neuartige Formen der Beerdigung nötig, die den Angehörigen aber - anders als z. B. Massengräber - ein angemessenes Trauern oder Abschied-Nehmen ermöglichen. Hierzu entwickeln sich neue Wirtschaftszweige und neue Technologien. Gleichzeitig bleibt immer die Hoffnung auf einen Ausweg, eine Impfung oder eine Heilung...

Das Buch ist nicht als zusammenhängende Geschichte erzählt, sondern als Sammlung verbundener Kurzgeschichten, die nach und nach weiter in der Zeit voranschreiten. So deckt es einen Zeitraum von gut einhundert Jahren ab und kann sich trotzdem die Zeit nehmen, echte Nähe zu den Figuren herzustellen. Dabei entstehen Bilder – wie das der "City of Laughter" –, die mich noch lange begleiten werden.

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.