How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu- Part One: Structure

In Sequoia Nagamatsu's novel in stories, How High We Go in the Dark, he explores how to cope with grief in a world where everyone is impacted by the death of a loved one. The story begins in 2030 with the study of a girl's corpse found in the Arctic Circle who seemed to die from an ancient virus. The short stories end thousands of years into our future with humankind leaving Earth. The book is not about how to stop the spread of the virus or how to change the world to be better; it's about how people survive in the difficulties that life throws at them.

The book is structured in a series of short stories with a cast of characters that are connected in various ways. These stories are set in a chronological order beginning with the discovery of the girl's remains, and progresses to show the ancient virus spreading across the world, the subsequent countless deaths, and the different ways that people cope or try to help others. This structure works very well for the story as it shows a natural development for humankind in different cultures as they learn to live with the changes in their world.

Additionally, each story mentions some new element in the world that a following story in the book explores. For example, in the story "City of Laughter," the character, Fitch, has had multiple organ transplants from pigs designed to grow the organs, and when this is mentioned, we ask how it's possible that this young boy could have an organ transplant from a pig. Then, in a following story, "Pig Son," we see how the pigs are being used to create new organs and a strange side effect of growing pigs with human organs. There's another example from "City of Laughter" where a character is watching a commercial for "a new funeral hotel for prolonged goodbyes." We wonder what that could possibly look like and we are given the answer in the story "Elegy Hotel" a couple stories later.

Summary

The structure of the book follows a careful chronological order that provides readers with questions that are answered in stories that follow. If you were to implement this type of structure in your story, be aware of how much time passes between each story and give your readers some sort of clue so that they don't get lost in the timeline. Many of Nagamatsu's stories told the reader where they are in the timeline with subtle hints at the beginning. To continue to use "City of Laughter," we know that there has been a significant time jump from the first story because we know on the first page of the chapter that the plague has progressed around the world. So, you don't need to outrightly tell your readers how much time has passed between stories, but letting your readers know where they're at in the timeline keeps them grounded in the overarching plot of the novel.