I read in spurts. I will do 10 or 15 books in a year for a few years, then none for a few years. I have been in a slump post college. I tend to think of “reading books” as reading Fiction. In the world of Non-Fiction, I mostly read about the American experience, with a focus on Economics and, independent of that, Black and minority lives. Reading Non-Fiction is study, reading fiction is a mixture of all facets of life, of various levels of pleasure and analysis, of the subject and ourselves. When I read Fiction, a film plays in my head. I even read the book as if narrated by a disconnected voice of authority, the characters slowly coming to life as amalgamations of my favorite actors, their voices ranging from classic characters like Sam Malone, Marge Simpson, Darth Vadar, Wednesday Adams, and Spock. The fog in my brain clears and light hits a silver screen, projecting the words of the author turn for turn. That being said, this is my very first book review. I experimented once with music review with The Weeknd’s “Starboy’’ and I felt horribly inept at truly understanding what music was trying to accomplish. I fear that this outing might be the same by the end, but in the spirit of the subject of this review, I will tread foriegn ground for, if no one else, myself. “How High We Go In The Dark’’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu took hold of me in a way that I have never found in modern literature, and I want to warn you that it isn’t for the faint of heart, but that it is also for people whom’s heart is weakened and needs to grow three sizes.

I am a man that loves nothing more than an introduction. I think context is important, and as such, I want my readers to understand how I came across this literary find. In an effort to help a friend, my group of do gooders started a book club. We decided that each person would submit a book and we would vote on the winner. It should come as no surprise that the person who this was supposed to help never actually won the vote, which is to say, we did our best. Despite that, on our third book this year, the winner ended up not liking their own choice, “Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career” by Keith Phillips, and vetoed the book half way, which started a whole new round of voting. In turn, she offered up the subject of our review. Now, I voted for this book knowing only the cover of the book, the author’s name, and its title. I literally judged a book by its cover and little else. I had decided, despite all reason, that my friends were worthy candidates of my entire trust and simply have not read the synopsis to any book I have voted on thus far, which is the “American Way”, for never better and always worse. The exception being in trivial matters like book clubs. Personally, I chose this book because the writer’s name shared reference to a grand tree. Little did I know I would be walking into one of the fastest page turners I had read in years. It may have well read itself.

You can put down your aperitif, it’s time for the main course. To continue to write this book’s praises, I should first give you a brief outline. The story revolves around a pandemic that initially attacks the lives of children predominantly, but evolves in waves that ripple out into the entire population of Earth, leading to a change that affects the course of humanity for millenia to come. Uncharacteristically for science fiction, this story is driven entirely by the humans that are actually living (and dying) in this world. The narrative structure is entirely in the perspective of the people experiencing it. It is a first-person perspective of the ingenuity and tenacity of the human spirit during the darkest hours. Reading what I just wrote, I am not sure that I would have read this book knowing what it was about, but I hope you will look past my inability to describe this book from a bird’s eye view any better than this. It’s possible I have betrayed the very thing that made this book stand out for me personally, the sheer surprise of it. There is much more in its pages, but it begs to be read to be understood. 

I hate to say that I have more concrete examples of what I don’t like about the book than what I do, but to tell you more would be to ruin the experience it provides. Nagamatsu has a style in this book that is so tender, raw, and visceral, you will wonder how someone can speak so universally about the human experience, but be so pointed as to tell a singular experience that is likely completely foreign to the reader. You feel like a spy in a life not your own, but come out the other end calling them your family; reminding you of your mom, dad, uncle, aunt, brother, or sister. Nagamatsu’s strength is in disarming you, alarming you, disturbing you, and comforting you. You will grow by the end of this book, and it’s not even “Self-Help”.

Before we get to my general criticisms of the story, I do have one more major praise. I am not Asian or Asian-American, but I really appreciated that many of the characters expressed their disdain when considering living up to stereotypes or their parents expectations. The story focuses on how we pass the torch from generation to generation and how we are often burned by the passing of the baton. I am mixed race, but specifically appear Black (or really any version of Brown and have been mistaken for Egyptian, Iranian, and Puerto Rican in the same day), and living up to both White and Black expectations has always been somewhat of a burden, easier to handle as I have gotten older and more sure of myself, but I still feel pangs of what Nagamatsu’s characters express. To be clear, this isn’t done in a heavy handed way, it’s woven into the story along with all sorts of other aspects to their characters, and it feels done rather deftly. 

Now for our dish best served cold, the critique. Truthfully, I have very few bad things to say that aren’t simply personal taste. As I said, the book was easy to swallow and had me coming back for more. However, what had me coming back was something that ultimately went unsatisfied. Chapter after chapter, there is this lingering sense that you are about to stumble into a true adventure, something that will dazzle you; that the characters are one step away from taking on challenges like Indiana Jones or John-Luc Picard. This may be where going into the book blind led me, rapidly lapping up everything in the book, only to be left thirsty afterwards. Is that the mark of a good book? I can only say that its final pages left me without wanting, happy that I found the bottom of the glass. Because at the end, I realized I wasn’t reading the book I always thought it would become, no matter how close to the end I would get. It was like I was under a spell that was removed only when I finished the book. I am not unhappy, but I still wish the book had turned down those adventurous alleys. For instance, the opening chapter shares a very similar tone to John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, and when the chapter was over, and I returned the following day to read the next, I was shocked that we were going a different way. And this continues to happen, over and over, but I still wanted more.

My final thoughts you may want to skip, as I fear it might give away too much, but personally, this did annoy me. Each chapter leads into the next, often indirectly, but leaving behind breadcrumbs for past or future characters to come. It is almost a series of short stories all told in the same universe. However, because the book is largely in first-person, the characters begin chapters using “I” statements and often takes several pages to even learn who is talking, and thus obscures the connective thread from characters in previous chapters until it almost feels silly that you didn’t see it. I wanted the chapter title to simply say who is talking, right beneath it. I just wanted to escape this nagging feeling like I was missing something in plain sight, or that should be in plain sight.

I apologize for being vague, but I do think that this book is best read to be understood. It feels like a monumental feat somehow, like I hadn’t experienced literature in a long time, or at the very least, in my time. All the great books seemed to have come out before I existed, and the ones that have come out since then, maybe I have never fully trusted. In being surprised by “How High We Go In The Dark’’, I feel like I can open up to more modern literature, maybe take the practice of “reading books” seriously again. I either have always read for fun or to be moved; reading something superfluous or reading something serious. I haven’t taken Fiction books seriously because the ones I tend to read aren’t trying to move the reader in any obvious way. I have always left that work up to Non-Fiction. Sequoia Nagamatsu may not be the first or the best in this genre or with this type of literature, but he is the first to make me feel this way, and it never would have happened unless I had been willing to be surprised. To go where I hadn’t gone before. It also wouldn’t have happened if he was any less of a writer, so to that end, I would like to thank him. Do yourself a favor, reader, and challenge yourself to this book. It is often sad, heartbreaking, and scary, but more than anything, it is boundlessly hopeful.