How High We Go in the Dark

Notes:
- feels like the author read a bunch of like “disturbing but cool” internet posts (death roller coasters, body farms) and/or watched too much black mirror, and then basically wrote fanfiction about it (plus covid).
- Ok we get it, if lots of people were dying, the funeral business might hypothetically become hyper commercial and trashy. Every story in this book is just repeating this same cynical concept with different examples.
- Occasionally there is some cool imagery but I'm not sure where everyone is getting the opinion that this is like heartbreaking good writing. Honestly every time there is a really cool concept or idea, the author then moves quickly away from it to some cynical and repetitive satire of how modern society handles death. I.e. some beautiful body horror descriptions of people's skin becoming transparent or glowing stars in their veins - briefly mentioned but not described in any detail.
- I feel like I am being mean about this book, there were some very compelling stories. The first four were actually all quite good. Although even by the end of those four I felt like some of the ideas were starting to be boring. Then the next ten just kinda blend together into a slurry of recycled concepts.
- The most interesting concept in this book (besides the pig) is the mystery of ancient body discovered in the first story with seashells from thousands of kms away. But then the story veers so sharply away from this until the final chapter. And then when this mystery finally is solved it's...pretty dissatisfying.
- All these ~surprise!~ connected characters (like you realize partway through one story that a side character in it is a main character from a previous story, or their child or whatever) seems like an attempt to make things more meaningful (or to be like, Cloud Atlas or something) but that only works if we actually feel deeply connected to any of the characters which I did not.

Basically just