This deeply disturbing but highly imaginative debut novel paints an evocative picture of a post-pandemic world – way way into the future. The story starts quietly when a young environmentalist and scientist dies after discovering the 30000-year-old remains of a part-Neanderthal girl.
Deep in the heart of Siberia this find unleashes a deadly virus that soon spreads and changes the course of human history.
Written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, How High We Go in the Dark is about a world in crisis but it is told through the ordinary lives of its characters and their emotional struggle to deal with and experience loss and a radically evolving new world.
Among those adjusting to this new world are an aspiring comedian, a scientist, a mother, a widowed painter and her teenage daughter, and a man who has recently survived death.
Simultaneously playful and serious, it is difficult to believe that this book was written prior to a COVID-19 world and was initially conceived in a café in Tokyo 10 years ago. As the novel progressed, I found the story quite dark and depressing and became less immersed in the story and the rapidly changing landscape and leaps into a futuristic world.
With his unique insight into the future, Nagamatsu is being billed as a promising writer. How High We Go in the Dark ends with a real twist. Lovers of science-fiction will enjoy this novel.
Reviewed by Karen Williams
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the bestselling novel, How High We Go in the Dark, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Gone. His work has appeared 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.
Other honors include a fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and shortlist inclusions for The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, the Ursula K Le Guin Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, as well as long list inclusions for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, The Dublin Literary Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award.
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 is originally from O’ahu, Hawaiʻi and the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, their cat Kalahira, their real dog Fenris, and a Sony Aibo robot dog named Calvino. He is at work on two other novels.
0 Comments