How High We Go in the Dark

En sorts Covid19 2.0 i framtiden. Oerhört mycket värre. Det blir för dystert. Folk sörjer, är ensamma och deppiga. De delarna/kapitlen jag gillar är inte många, när det äntligen är lite i rymden och lite fascinerande fantasi. Många recensenter lyfter fram "det genreöverskridande" som ett stort plus i kanten. Jag tycker inte att det funkar så bra, utan hade hellre läst någon lite mer renodlad science fiction.

If I had known ahead of time what the structure and focus of this book was, I probably wouldn't have read it. That would have been my loss.

"How High We Go In the Dark" is a series of interconnected short stories set in the same world. This is not my favorite structural style: I prefer to follow a set of characters from beginning to end. Nagamatsu, though, has a rare talent for sketching out characters you can quickly attach to. I felt sorrowful every time I reached the end of a chapter and had to say goodbye.

In this way, the structure was a good fit for the world itself, and the story the author wanted to tell: one focused on death, loss, and how it transforms us. With some frequency, leaving a character at the end of their chapter meant watching them die.

This is one the most depressing novels I've ever read, but it also deeply creative, empathetic, hopeful, and beautiful. It was satisfying seeing the strands from earlier chapters weave their way through the later ones. In a lesser writer's hands, this novel would be unbearable, but in Nagamatsu's, it becomes something hard to bear, yet worth bearing.