How High We Go in the Dark

3/5. A mosaic novel of short stories, several written pre-Covid, about life after a plague comes out of the arctic ice.

Disappointing. Some of these pieces are well-done in and of themselves, but the whole package fails to cohere despite a nearly pathological need to connect the stories. And what the critics read as profound struck me as trite. Also, I am not the right audience for this book's abortive forays into the weird/surreal (the titular story) or the medically dubious (a pregnant woman is in a "coma" and her fetus does not develop for the entire time, then resumes when she awakens? Yeah, sure bro).

And, well, um. I did not look up the author before reading, and their name did not clearly signal gender, but very quickly I was like 'oh, this is 100% written by a dude.' Ding, I was correct. There was just something unmistakable in the repeated evocations of dudes being sad about/having regrets over/lusting after dead or dying women and girls.

Content notes: Oof. A lot of dead people and particularly children. Euthanasia. Suicide. Pandemics.