How High We Go in the Dark

A Novel

Hardcover, 304 pages

English language

Published Jan. 18, 2022 by William Morrow.

ISBN:
978-0-06-307264-0
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (2 reviews)

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 …

5 editions

How High We Go in the Dark

5 stars

I read this for the #SFFBookClub January book pick. How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of interconnected short stories dealing with death, grief, and remembrance in the face of overwhelming death and a pandemic. Despite getting very dark, I was surprised at the amount of hopefulness to be found in the face of all of this.

It was interesting to me that this collection had been started much earlier and the Arctic plague was a later detail to tie everything together. Personally, I feel really appreciative of authors exploring their own pandemic-related feelings like this; they're certainly not often comfortable feelings, but it certainly helps me personally, much more than the avoidance and blinders song and dance that feels on repeat everywhere else in my life.

It's hard for me to evaluate this book as a whole. I deeply enjoyed the structural setup, and seeing background …

Von Trauer, Tod (CN!) und der Zukunft der Menschheit

No rating

"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 …

Subjects

  • Fiction
  • Dystopian