How High We Go in the Dark

This book is fascinating. It's a take on what the world might look like in the future, upon the release of a bizarre plague from beneath melting glacier ice. There are scientific advances, institutionalized processes for helping people die, entire industries revolving around funerals and memorials. It's jarring and at the same time not to imagine a world with a high powered funerary lobby making plays at government funding.

Nagamatsu weaves multiple storylines together in such a heartfelt and moving way. The subtle connections between characters, the through-line of love and family and remembrance, it's gorgeous - if anything, I would consider this novel a paean to human resilience. To love and what keeps people together in difficult times. It's not necessarily a crying emotional narrative, to me the whole book is just voices from an imagined future in which death and dying, regardless of how, have lost any taboo or stigma, allowing people to make their endings with thought and care and support.

I'll definitely be thinking about this one for a long time. Four stars instead of five, though, but I won't explain why to anyone who hasn't read it.