How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel

Look, I’m only half way through this book, so take my review with a pinch of salt. I’m sort of hoping the author doesn’t read this because it is very inventive, very charming catchy prose and nobody wants to hear from that one reader who thinks your new hit novel is a stinker. But avoid this at all costs if you have been recently bereaved or have ever lost a child. I cannot warn you emphatically enough. I heard about the premise- a plague unleashed from early humans found in the melting permafrost- and I bought it immediately. I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t realise it was going to be surrealist. Climate disaster is scary enough without bizarre mutation and aliens and all the rest of it. It does a disservice to its readers by mixing the real impending disaster with very silly ideas that don’t draw pieces of truth from the work of any scientists anywhere ever. And given the format - bleak vignette after bleak vignette - it just means you never have a chance to care about any of the characters and they blur into a mush of half remembered parts. Perhaps that was the idea and I just don’t get it. It’s harrowing, but not edifying. Please take note that this is extraordinarily grim and deals mostly with the senseless deaths of small children and with families cut up into haunted individuals. I can’t bear to continue with it. I’ll have to go and read some actual climate disaster predictions just to cheer myself up.

Deep beneath the melting Siberian permafrost, an archeologist makes a chilling discovery: dozens of perfectly preserved Neanderthal bodies, laid out with precision. As global warming thaws what the millennia have guarded, something wakes up. Despite the scientists’ best efforts, a long-dormant microorganism escapes the site. Before long, the “Arctic plague” threatens the very foundations of human civilization. It’s slightly misleading to call Sequoia Nagamatsu’s first novel “science fiction,” though it uses time-honored genre staples to launch its story. I wouldn’t even necessarily call it “a novel,” as it’s basically a short-story sequence, the Winesburg, Ohio of mass-market fiction. Nagamatsu has crafted an experimental form, a postmodern rejection of literal through-line storytelling in favor of immersing yourself in a whirlwind of speculative experience. The Arctic plague first strikes children. Global civilization (but, in this book, mostly America) struggles to maintain its cultural suppositions about childhood innocence, even as childhood becomes the number-one indicator of mortality. Scientists perform increasingly daredevil experiments to keep children alive, to preserve the illusion that humanity has a future. Some of these experiments test the limits of what defines “humanity.” It’s exceedingly difficult to synopsize Nagamatsu’s story because, as I’ve already said, it lacks a through-line. Main characters in one chapter emerge as principal protagonists several chapters later; others disappear without explanation. Rather like life, that. The story jumps years, sometimes generations, as Nagamatsu moves onto whatever most interests him. Most stories are set in America, mostly California, though three take place in Japan. Rather than a straightforward narrative, Nagamatsu focuses on creating a mood. As you’d expect from a novel about a plague, themes of mortality and loss abound. Though one chapter focuses on disembodied souls in limbo, that’s an outlier; nearly every chapter deals primarily with survivors, those forced to watch helplessly as their loved ones slip away. These days, many readers may find these themes disconcertingly familiar. But despite these themes, Nagamatsu’s storytelling is remarkably optimistic. His protagonists find meaning in survival, in facing a world characterized by bereavement. His characters face the existentialist reality that all human endeavor ends in mortality, sooner or later; then they shoulder that burden and continue. Death, to Nagamatsu’s characters, isn’t the end, it’s their reason to persevere, though they sometimes require several chapters to accept this. Even with his cast of thousands and his international scope, Nagamatsu’s storytelling has a personal edge. Several characters are, like Nagamatsu himself, Japanese-American; more than a few are aspiring a...

This sprawling vision of a future where we hope to survive climate change and a strange epidemic will appeal to readers of Kim Stanley Robinson and Emily St. John Mandel. This series of linked stories end up forming a novel with the outcomes of some stories showing up in others, and what might seem throwaway details shedding new light on other chapters. Each chapter is from a different person‘s point of view. I found that despite the shorter time with each viewpoint character, I was very engaged and cared what happened to them. I know Sequoia Nagamatsu’s work as a short story writer and am not surprised he is able to make every word count. This narrative structure allows him to show us centuries while still delving deeply into individual lives. A mummified Neanderthal is discovered in melting Arctic permafrost, and the virus that killed her escapes to infect the globe. Written before COVID-19, this novel describes some things that have become all too familiar: healthcare services stretched to the brink, shortages, curfews, first and second waves, and how class, race, and country affect medical outcomes. The lingering effects of the plague on the society of survivors may end up being instructive for us as well. I found this book both entertaining and deeply thought-provoking. Definitely recommended.