Clare L. Deming

I don’t remember where I came across this book, but it ended up being a selection for one of my book clubs last year. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a novel told through interconnected short stories (paid link). Read on below to see what I thought.

Here is the blurb:

A 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.

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 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.

This book drew fairly polarized responses from the book club. I did enjoy it, but I could see how it is not for everyone. This book starts out at the beginning of a pandemic and ultimately is about how we deal with death.

Being someone who deals with life and death situations and humane euthanasia every day as a veterinarian, I found that the situations in this book took a thoughtful look at death and grief, but in ways that went beyond our current cultural norms. My favorite example of this is an amusement park for terminally ill children. Their parents bring them to the park to enjoy all the thrills and excitement, and then for the last ride of the day, they embark on a rollercoaster that breaks their necks to end their suffering. The parents know the purpose of the park, but the children don’t.

The disease that results from the pandemic was also fascinating to me. It caused the organs of those afflicted with it to slowly change to a different organ. At one point it only affected children, then later on it spreads to everyone. This book isn’t about the science behind the virus or the epidemiology of the pandemic, but rather follows how society changes as a result.

This is also a science fiction tale that takes some odd tangents into a possible afterlife and interstellar travel, although those aren’t exactly the main plot. Overall, I thought that How High We Go in the Dark brought a unique perspective to how we think about preparations for and rituals about the end of life.

Have you read any of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s short stories? Let me know in the comments (above).

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