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Nagamatsu, Sequoia. How High We Go in the Dark. Morrow. Jan. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780063072640. $27.99. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

A product of more than 10 years’ labor, this novel will ring out sharply in today’s pandemic world. In 2030, archaeologists troweling through the Arctic Circle’s melting permafrost discover the well-preserved remains of a girl who evidently died of an ancient virus. The plague thus unleashed harries generations, as people find new ways to mourn. There are funerary skyscrapers and hotels for the dead, interstellar starships (the better to find a safer place), and a theme park for terminally ill children where an employee falls for a mother desperate to hold her child one last time. As with his story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, a BuzzFeed Notable Book and Entropy Best Book, Nagamatsu blends literary and visionary verve in a narrative winning comparison to Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven . With a 100,000-copy first printing.

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