how high we go in the dark sequoia nagamatsu

It is often a bleak and distressing read, an attempt to come to grips with trauma and loss across generational time. How High We Go In The Dark is frequently devastating, unflinchingly exploring the rawness of grief. Told in a series of interlocking mosaic narratives spanning from the immediate outbreak and aftermath to centuries in the future, Nagamatsu makes the profound consequences across society tangible by focusing on the lived daily realities of his various characters. Written in the years immediately preceding the Covid-19 outbreak, Nagamatsu’s exploration of the long-term ramifications of societies negotiating grief, trauma and survivor’s guilt feels both chillingly prescient and incredibly relevant. Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go In The Dark (2022) is a remarkable work of speculative fiction, an urgent exploration of grief and loss in the wake of a global pandemic. And I’d tell her, You’re only one person and you only have one life. “Once, I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was just trying to keep track of it all because it didn’t seem like anybody else noticed or cared that we kept making the same mistakes, that hate in a neighborhood or injustice in a state ran like poison through veins, until another ice shelf collapsed or another animal went extinct.

How high we go in the dark sequoia nagamatsu