How High We Go in the Dark
2022
- american literature
- virus diseases
- fiction
- epidemics
- regression (civilization)
- interpersonal relations
- resilience (personality trait)
- life on other planets
- maladies à virus
- romans, nouvelles
The story
Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter's research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways. Among those adjusting to this new normal are an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive; a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops human speech; a man who, after recovering from his own coma, plans a block party for his neighbours who have also woken up to find that they alone have survived their families; and a widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
What it’s like
Interlocking short stories in a restrained, precise literary voice, with sharp grief softened by dry humor and tender, offbeat images. Sparse, plainspoken sentences give way to sudden lyrical turns, so a scene about a theme park for dying children can sit beside a quiet moment of a grandmother and granddaughter gazing at the stars. The mood is melancholy but not bleak: wry, bittersweet, and quietly hopeful, the kind of unease that loosens into warmth. Violence is largely off-page and the plague's toll is felt through absence and aftermath rather than gore, though death, illness, and loss are constant and some passages are emotionally hard. Sexual content is minimal. The rhythm is brisk and episodic, each section a self-contained portrait that opens onto a wider, strange, speculative canvas. Good for readers who want a rainy-afternoon book of melancholy and resilience, who like linked stories with a speculative edge, and who can handle grief without needing reassurance on every page.
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