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st_ender's review against another edition
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Last part sort of let me down but it's still a hit
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Animal death, Medical content, Death, Grief, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Medical trauma and Body horror
Minor: Chronic illness, Confinement, Cancer, Pregnancy, Body shaming, and Suicide
Extensive discussion of euthanasia, and anything that can possibly happen to a person once they die.heytaytay12's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.25
Dark, disturbing, and deeply hopeful.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Pandemic/Epidemic, Terminal illness, Grief, Medical trauma, Blood, Medical content, Suicide, Death, Child death, and Death of parent
baileyes's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
I can see it being a favorite book for many but it wasn’t really for me
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Murder, Suicide, Chronic illness, Terminal illness, Death, Grief, Cancer, Animal death, Violence, Child death, Death of parent, Pandemic/Epidemic, Medical content, and Abandonment
foldingthepage_kayleigh's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This novel is a collection of short vignettes, following interconnected characters through their experiences with dying and death, of the people and animals around them and of the world.
I’ve been sitting on this review for awhile because I’ve needed to collect myself and my thoughts after this depressing read. Almost grotesque in its depictions of grief, I found myself crying in horror at almost every chapter. This book reminded me a lot of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, but even more bleak and realistic.
Overall, I think this book adds something interesting to the sci-fi genre in its speculations about death industries, and to be able to give impactful characterizations in just one chapter each is impressive. I’d recommend this book to those who like well-written books that will make you feel emotionally intense, and who find medical/sci-fi/space to be intriguing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Confinement, Vomit, Death, Death of parent, Child death, Medical content, Pandemic/Epidemic, Terminal illness, Grief, and Classism
sgrunwald96's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
The first 5 star book I’ve read that I’m not sure I’ll read again. Brutally sad and deeply relatable in our late-capitalism, post-pandemic world. It seems so close to where we could have gone if things had gotten worse. I liked the story linkages and the unique storylines. It felt like a good reminder of how many first-person perspectives there are, even when tragedy blurs people into statistics.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Death, Death of parent, Pandemic/Epidemic, Child death, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Cancer, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, and Medical content
plantybooklover's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
This is a speculative fiction book, mashed up with sci fi, and a touch of horror. A creative and inventive exploration of a fictional pandemic started by Ground water contamination. Each chapter explores themes of the environment, relationships, community, grief, death and dying. Per notes, this was started in 2011- so it must have been wild for the author to experience the Covid 19 Pandemic as it unrolled. The parallels are never far from the mind as one reads. Definitely a thought provoking reading experience.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Cancer, Racism, Animal cruelty, Death, Medical trauma, and Medical content
tyras_bookshelf's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Themes: grief, death, illness, love, existentialism , pandemic/plague
My score of this book feels really complicated because I don’t think a 3.5 conveys how touched I was by the stories, even if I didn’t really like the book. Enjoying a book isn’t the basis of it being good by any means but I hesitate to rank something highly if I didn’t like it much.
Focusing on two stories in particular-Through the Garden of Memory and The Scope of Possibility- these were incredibly creative and emotional. I give these separate stories each a 4 because I would recommend and reread them as short stories. That said, I didn’t like the others enough to warrant a 4 for the whole book.
Many of the stories felt disjointed. They were all written as short stories since 2013 that were combined so that underscores my point. I’m glad Nagamatsu wove them together with characters that crossed over into each story unlike other books I’ve read with this similarly approach but I felt they lacked true cohesion as one book.
That said, I have so many thoughts so the following is me basically live tweeting the book as I read it. Skip to the end if you don’t wanna read my brain dump.
—
Interesting how Clara spins being away from her daughter; her negligence seems fueled by this idea of grandeur and importance in her work (now that I’ve finished the book, this makes a lot of sense).
I wonder if we’ll get into Yumi’s origin, Clara likely didn’t want to be a mom (how wrong I was).
Really big philosophical questions about global community; Clara at a young age is already consumed by the ills of the world and her responsibility to bear witness to tragedy.
I think the chapter with the darkness and the bubble memories is my favorite (Through the Garden of Memory). I really really like how he conceptualized memory and death and this sort of limbo of the afterlife. I also love/hate how vague and ambiguous the ending of that chapter was because that feels encompassing of my understanding of death. I thought it was really interesting too how Nagamatsu illustrates all of those people that have died the same way, and have ended up in the same sort of ether, a place/non-place, because it feels symbolic of connection through tragedy. I can imagine like people having died of a mass tragedy all at once ending up in the same place together still so tied to each other.
Pig son is freaky, and perverse and kind of precious because this pig is essentially a child. And also kind of makes me think that the baby from the ether/memory garden ended up in a pig body or something. (The audio section of this part of the book also made me nauseous. The voice actor was great but the pig man sounded absolutely retched)
Interesting how money is still so prevalent in this post-disease society. The whole book is freaky and sci-fy heavy which feels at times too close to impossibility to be realistic (not that it has to be because this is fiction after-all) but then Nagamatsu connects some element of culture or humanness or capitalism that grounds the story in realness again.
Similar to The Candy house and Cloud Cuckoo Land which I also had complicated feelings about.
Really kind of bored around the space travel chapter. It was just talking about the grandmother and the daughter and I didn’t find much to be challenging/interesting in that chapter as it played out. Although I was really happy to see that a cure was created, and that the world is rebuilding itself (this felt needed and hopeful).
I think the biggest unbelievable aspect of that storyline, though, and maybe this is my own cynicism, is that corporations would be focused at all on healing the planet is laughable. It’s lovely that Nagamatsu could picture a world where humanity and our survival was more important than profits, but even in his story currency still exists, and there were still the messages of classism throughout the book.
I think the biggest unbelievable aspect of that storyline, though, and maybe this is my own cynicism, is that corporations would be focused at all on healing the planet is laughable. It’s lovely that Nagamatsu could picture a world where humanity and our survival was more important than profits, but even in his story currency still exists, and there were still the messages of classism throughout the book.
6,000 years!? But what’s time really without a connection to the sun? How do you watch the years pass in your own body without something to tether it to?
Meloncholy Nights in a Tokyo Cyber Cafe seemed like a regression in the line of the story but also maybe symbolic of peoples complacency, and a striving to “ return to normalcy” in the face of the world literally ending. Not unlike how we treated Covid, which made it very uncomfortable social commentary.
I did think it was a weird choice for that story to be in third person and I’m still working through the symbols there, but it felt odd and took me out of the story.
Then, also, Akira’s naivety and the sheer amount of ego it takes to think that you can convince someone not to end their life because you’re suddenly in love with them is baffling. He met this woman in Su**ide pact virtual arena and is surprised that she actually wants to unalive herself and not stick around for a romance that was one-sided.
The story dragged for a while near the middle.
Claire was an alien/space being/deity(?) the whole time?! That makes a lot of sense as to why she was so distant and so focused on saving the planet. There was also an element of guilt there that we didn’t know about. That’s a really cool twist.
——
Again, now that I know the ending, Clara’s behavior is so clear. I guess that was foreshadowing. I liked being surprised by the ending but I also think the story would have been so much better to follow Clara as the thread of each story and understand her motivation more.
I could have read an entire book alone about the red planet with the killer insects and I think that would’ve been a really cool story. I think all the stories are sort of interesting, but that honestly, Nagamatsu was just doing too much with this whole thing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Medical content, Child death, Death, Cancer, and Suicide
Moderate: Stalking
Minor: Classism
ariep's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Absolutely incredible read, I loved it. Very beautiful, and messy, and emotional. What a great reflection on what it means to be human. I loved the broad spectrum of emotions I felt, and how real it all was. I was surprised by how interconnected the stories were, I really loved that! The writing was incredibly beautiful. Definitely going to reread!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Body horror, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Child death
Moderate: Suicide, Death of parent, Death, Cursing, Chronic illness, Infidelity, Racism, Classism, and Medical content
Minor: Pregnancy
em_the_wallflower's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Grief, Terminal illness, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Death
Moderate: Animal death, Chronic illness, and Medical content
erinhunt's review
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
How High We Go in the Dark is a beautifully painful exploration of life, death, and grief. The interweaving of stories is so engaging (though I docked a partial star as I didn’t experience that with some later half storylines). This is definitely going to be read again, knowing these stories will hit in different ways each time.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Medical content, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Death, Child death, Grief, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Terminal illness