@jamesjbrownjr@bookwyrm.social I read the book and I completely missed that it was doing something with the chapter titles and branching logic!
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Hello! I am trying out bookwyrm. I am also @shauna@social.coop on Mastodon.
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Shauna finished reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends—often in love, …
Shauna finished reading The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one …
Shauna rated There Are No Accidents: 5 stars
There Are No Accidents by Jessie Singer
We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept …
Shauna finished reading There Are No Accidents by Jessie Singer
There Are No Accidents by Jessie Singer
We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept …
Shauna reviewed How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
A hard but beautiful read
5 stars
If I had known ahead of time what the structure and focus of this book was, I probably wouldn't have read it. That would have been my loss.
"How High We Go In the Dark" is a series of interconnected short stories set in the same world. This is not my favorite structural style: I prefer to follow a set of characters from beginning to end. Nagamatsu, though, has a rare talent for sketching out characters you can quickly attach to. I felt sorrowful every time I reached the end of a chapter and had to say goodbye.
In this way, the structure was a good fit for the world itself, and the story the author wanted to tell: one focused on death, loss, and how it transforms us. With some frequency, leaving a character at the end of their chapter meant watching them die.
This is one the most …
If I had known ahead of time what the structure and focus of this book was, I probably wouldn't have read it. That would have been my loss.
"How High We Go In the Dark" is a series of interconnected short stories set in the same world. This is not my favorite structural style: I prefer to follow a set of characters from beginning to end. Nagamatsu, though, has a rare talent for sketching out characters you can quickly attach to. I felt sorrowful every time I reached the end of a chapter and had to say goodbye.
In this way, the structure was a good fit for the world itself, and the story the author wanted to tell: one focused on death, loss, and how it transforms us. With some frequency, leaving a character at the end of their chapter meant watching them die.
This is one the most depressing novels I've ever read, but it also deeply creative, empathetic, hopeful, and beautiful. It was satisfying seeing the strands from earlier chapters weave their way through the later ones. In a lesser writer's hands, this novel would be unbearable, but in Nagamatsu's, it becomes something hard to bear, yet worth bearing.
Shauna finished reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter …
Shauna finished reading Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson
Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson
The colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having travelled light years from home to bring one thousand sleeping …
Shauna finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of …
Shauna finished reading Spear by Nicola Griffith
Spear by Nicola Griffith
The girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name. She grows up in the wild, in …
Shauna finished reading This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in …
Shauna finished reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those …
