How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu - review

---

Title: How High We Go in the Dark

Author: Sequoia Nagamatsu

Genre: Literary Fiction / Science fiction

Pages: 304

My rating: ★★★★★

Other notable works by author: Where We Go When All We Were is Gone

---

I have a sneaking suspicion that Sequoia Nagamatsu is actually the sandman, a shadowy figure who whispers stories into my ears as I sleep, that transform into dreams or nightmares as they travel across my subconscious. How else could I explain how eerily similar the chapters of How High We Go in the Dark are to the nightmares that plague me at night (no joke, I’ve actually had recurring dreams about talking pigs)?

Nagamatsu vividly paints a bleak portrait of the world, a few years into the future from now, plagued by disease and death in the fourteen chapters that make up this novel. Each chapter reads as a short story featuring a different protagonist, told in the first person, as they try to cope, live, and love in a world saturated by grief and death, where elegy hotels and a euthanasia rollercoaster are the new norm. And each story is connected, much as how in real life our distinct lives brush up against each other, so they do so as well in this novel.

While this may seem like an incredibly bleak novel to read, especially considering our current climate, it was actually also strangely uplifting. There are strains of hope that run through each story, and every character is striving to do something helpful and to love/be loved. The sense of community and human connection is strong throughout, which left even this cynic feeling hopeful, and I might even have shed a tear or two, not gonna lie.