The High House

The High House is a devastating, poetic, painfully human trudge through the chaos of climate change. What is it like to be a parent through an apocalypse of our own making? What is it like to be a child? What is it like to be both, as the oldest sibling with absent parents, or as the sole dependent of an aging guardian?

The High House explores why people continue choosing to bring life into the world even as things become increasingly grim and volatile. It tugs strands of hope out of the most bleak circumstances. It does not shrug off the responsibility we all have to be stewards of this planet, but it still acknowledges the helplessness we feel. What is there to do except what we've always done? How do individual day-to-day actions fix corporate exploitation causing global shifts? Why is it on us?

Here parents work constantly within limited time to give their children a fighting chance to exist for a full lifespan. They sacrifice quality time and emotional connections to stockpile resources and make contingency plans.

But what is parenthood, at its core? Is it about materially providing for beings dependent on you, or is it about nourishing someone's soul and their bond with you? Is it about leaving your children with as much as you can, or staying with them for as long as possible? In an ideal world, we don't have to choose. But ours is certainly not an ideal world.

I don't usually go for climate fiction (cli fi, I've heard it called), but I really love a quiet dystopian novel (favorite examples include [b:Station Eleven|20170404|Station Eleven|Emily St. John Mandel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680459872l/20170404.SX50.jpg|28098716], [b:Severance|36348525|Severance|Ling Ma|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1507060524l/36348525.SY75.jpg|58029884], [b:I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself|60679392|I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself|Marisa Crane|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1648063139l/60679392.SY75.jpg|95655500], and [b:The Wall|59468837|The Wall|Marlen Haushofer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639132182l/59468837.SY75.jpg|573687]). This one was so fantastic I cannot stop rambling about it. What a gorgeous, heartbreaking book.

Quietly powerful, and beautifully moving, The High House is a post-apocalyptic love story to humanity, our relationships, and our place in the natural world. Greengrass shows extraordinary grace in her handling of conflicting emotions and hardships, crafting a quartet of characters that each bring so much to the page in small, deeply moving bursts of revelation making the novel a fast yet affecting read. I loved it.