A review by booklane
The High House by Jessie Greengrass

challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

 
‘Neutrality has become a fantasy. The time for it is past’⁠
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A novel that fully captures the mood of our times like no other and what one can imagine as the moment of ecological and societal collapse -- chilling in its exactitude: seeing an increasing number of ecological disasters, the sensation that collapse is far, the difficulty in apprehending the magnitude of the problem, the tragic moment of acceleration and collapse when unprecedented events take place and too much is at stake at the same time.⁠
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Our protagonists are alive because Francesca, the mother of one of them and a climate activist, has fitted a house that could guarantee survival in dire times. Their reminiscences of the warmth and little comforts of things past are beautiful, vivid and evocative, infused with the luminous longing and nostalgia that is only experienced when something is lost forever. Other interesting elements are the value survival and the backstory, the way the tension among the characters changes due to the circumstances. The acuteness and intensity of the writing is a strength of this novel, which at times tends to slow down in the renditions of different reactions to the same event. ⁠
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Highly recommended and in the same lines is the essay #TheGreatDerangement by #AmitavGhosh, about our mind’s struggle to conceive cataclysmic events of such scope and what it can be like to be in unchartered territory. It seems his thought illuminates these pages. ⁠
Beautiful, urgent and timely #slowburner⁠
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