The High House is not what I expected at the outset, but I found myself really enjoying it. This is a quiet novel on what the impacts of climate change may look like in the not so far off future. We have a group of people living in the high house, all of their lives intimately impacted by climate change and trying to survive in this new climate future. I enjoyed the ruminations on the past and present. I expected it to be more thriller than literary but found the literary worked well for me.

Well written, post apocalyptic, and I enjoyed he characters. I’m always looking for a new take on end of the world fiction and this one worked for me.

A novel focused on the effects of climate change on a small village in England. Well written with good characterization.

I read a lot of literary and genre-based speculative fiction, and I typically enjoy even the grimmest of post-apocalyptic stories, including climate fiction. The premise of this book is simple, but I was intrigued by the potential of a character-driven story as well as the trope of “strangers stuck together in a house during a disaster scenario” (Leave the World Behind, which I loved, came to mind for me as a possible comparison.) I tried my best to appreciate this book for what it is, and there are certainly many redeeming elements, but in the end I do think there was something lacking for me. The prose is absolutely lovely, and the setting was fascinating and well-drawn, but I found that I wanted more from the characters - there wasn’t enough to engage with there to balance the trimmed-down plot (and the obviously limited geographical reach of the primary setting). It felt more like a long description of unwinding doom, beautiful but a little unsatisfying for me personally as a reader. It could absolutely be said that this impediment to connection was an intentional choice on the author’s part, relating to the theme of a “depersonalized” world (the literal death of humans in the wake of climate catastrophe), and that would be fine too, but it wasn’t what I was looking for here. I can’t help thinking that if the world building was less a literal projection from our own and had more fantastical elements, it might have balanced the lack of character development to make for a more engaging read.
Despite my own criticisms here, I would still recommend this novel to readers of contemporary British literature, climate fiction, and literary speculative fiction. This is a short read, and the beautiful prose and setting, in addition to the timeliness of its meditation on the post-human, may make it a worthwhile read for you.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC.

'The High House' by Jessie Greengrass is a novel about an eco catastrophe in the near future.

In the near future, the inevitable forces a climate scientist named Francesca to create a refuge for her son and step-daughter. The house has two caretakers, Grandy a jack of all trades and his granddaughter Sally. When calamity hits and before Francesca perishes, she sends her stepdaughter Caro and her son Paulie to the house for shelter.

The book tells the story weaving between the years, as bees and birds and people disappear from the planet until it appears that the only inhabitants left are those of the High House.

The writing is strong with breathtaking prose. While it's not a happy subject, seeing it through the eyes of these survivors makes it even keener. I heartily recommend this book, especially to those fans of similar works by Margaret Atwood.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Scribner and NetGalley. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

📚 The High House by Jessie Greengrass 📚

"There is a kind of organic mercy, grown deep inside us, which makes it so much easier to care about small, close things. Else how could we live? As I grew up, crisis slid from distant threat to imminent probability, and we tuned it out like static. We adjusted to each emergent normality and we did what we had always done - the commutes, and holidays, the Friday big shops, day trips to the countryside, afternoons in the park. We did these things not out of ignorance, nor through thoughtlessness, but only because there seemed nothing else to do. And we did them as well because they were a kind of fine-grained incantation made in flesh and time, the unexulted tedious familiarity of our daily lives would keep us safe, we thought."

Thank you to Scribner books for this eARC. This short, haunting novel is available now. I listened to half of it (the audio is excellent!) and read the other half in print.

This is a quiet and contemplative story about a small family that lives out climate disaster in a house in the Suffolk countryside. It's told by three perspectives looking back about 20 years or so to when the world completely changed. One narrator was a young adult, another was 18, and the third was 4 years old when they had to take shelter at the high house. This storytelling style of looking back allows for a lot of incredible writing - someone describing how they felt before the world changed, but with the retrospective knowledge of what was to come for themselves and their family haunts the story and kept me reading. The writing is amazing, and the story does not wrap up into a neat little bow. I will be looking for this author's other book now.

"The High House" by Jessie Greengrass is a quietly powerful novel showing the fierce attempts of two parents trying to protect their children from the effects of vast flooding on a heating planet.

Climate scientist, Francesca, and her husband have prepared High House as a haven for their children, teenager Caro and toddler Pauly. While abroad, trying to warn of the coming catastrophe, it happens. They have only a brief call to send Caro and Pauly immediately to High House. The two arrive to meet a college student and her grandfather who have been hired to care for the children and the property.

This is not a post-apocalyptic novel with guns and zombies; it is one of simple survival. The chapters alternate between a grieving and guilty Caro who agonizes over the people passing on the road that they cannot save; and a realistic and purposeful Sally who knows that Pauly's survival depends on them guarding the resources they have

The language of the novel is beautiful - elegiac, with beautiful descriptions of nature and how even it is changing. Also it is overlaid with the grief that we have not been able to prolong our stay within it.

In 2009, Margaret Aywood wrote a novel, "The Year of the Flood." It was not about a flood of water, but about a "water-less" flood, a pandemic, that near destroyed humankind, but then left us to continue to destroy ourselves. A scary book, it held our attention for a time, but even COVID could not remind us of the dangers. So it leaves us with the question of all "cli-fi" novels: what are we supposed to do with what we read? Maybe just be aware that we failed to act.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

This was good in a depressing way! So easy to see this truly happening. I'm not sure I liked the way conversations were written, but that is basically the only thing I didn't really like.

This cli-fi novel set in the near future when climate change is causing severe storms, and floods that wipe out entire cities and are completely unpredictable. The human element and what survival looks like in a world that seems all too real was completely engaging and heart breaking at times. I would definitely recommend and thank you to the publisher for providing me with this drc available through netgalley.

The High House is a must-read for every world citizen. As the earth warms and the sea levels rise, there are fewer and fewer options for people trying to survive. Extreme weather, stronger storms, and rising temperatures become more frequent and Francesca is a scientist caught between warning the public and trying to save her own family. This beautifully written story is more than a cautionary tale. It's more a map of where we're all headed in the very near future.

3.5 stars is most accurate. I enjoyed this story about a group of people trying to survive 'end times' as the climate changes & mass flooding is taking lives/homes/communities/land. The story is told in short chapters, from each of the small group's perspective. It describes probably fairly realistically the clues of & effects on nature that might be seen, & also the planning & needs for survival. It's a quick read & offers something......a future, to think about?
I received this e-ARC from publisher Scribner via NetGalley, in return for reading it & posting my own fair/honest review.

The premise of THE HIGH HOUSE is a world-ending, climate change-induced flood that was predicted by scientists and ignored by most everyone else. (Because what is science if not unwanted opinions from people who focus their entire lives and brainpower on a single topic that your average Joe could just as easily find their own alternate facts about on the internet to fuel their uneducated biases and allow them to avoid any possible changes to their lives for something as annoying as the wellbeing of others?? …anyway…) It all feels terrifyingly possible and not at all far fetched.

Throughout this thought-provoking novel, we see the world in a non-linear format through the eyes of three characters, Caro, Sal and Pauly. At the time of the floods, all three were young and fairly, if not entirely, oblivious to the impending doom of humanity. It seems they were not unlike majority of the world’s citizens, either completely unaware or living with a “it can’t happen to me” mentality.

They each had a relationship with Francesca, a renowned environmental scientist. I’m impressed by JESSIE GREENGRASS’s ability to invoke Francesca’s feelings of absolute despair surrounding the impending disaster through the narrations of Caro and Sal. Even when they were hyper focused on their own lives, their off-handed thoughts and comments about Francesca helped to illustrate the state of the world at large.

There are countless passages that I had to sit back and digest. GREENGRASS has such a way of writing words that could just as easily have come from an article written about our world. Which…yikes, ya know?

My biggest criticism is the lack of depth with the narrators. I was constantly getting the two female characters confused because there was little to differentiate their personalities and viewpoints. It really detracted from my reading experience.

THE HIGH HOUSE didn’t pack quite the emotional punch that I was hoping it would. That said, it had me thinking throughout and was quick read with a raw and real ending. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a dystopian novel that doesn’t feel quite as far from reality as this genre sometimes does.

Not pleasure reading unless you are the type who likes to torment yourself. That being said it's an excellent book. It's just that it's painful and really lays you bare, the fact that this isn't really a fantasy but more of a reality, a near distant future that is getting closer by the day. It's challenging and asks a lot of the reader. I think it would be a very good book to read in schools. Technically it is very well written with voices and timelines jumping all over the place but doing so to truly paint the whole picture. Discriptive, immersive. There is no happy ending, not even a satisfying one. But there won't be will there? I feel depressed now but I respect the book for that.

GoodReads:
I haven't read much dystopian lit since March of 2020. But this cover really appealed to me. I couldn't get the egret out of my mind. And, since this dystopia is entirely about climate change, I decided I could handle it. It turns out it's not just that I could handle but I found hearing how all three main characters felt about the change that they couldn't come back from deeply cathartic. And yes, the egrets are important to the story. Actually, quite a few birds are. This book really moved me, and I stayed up too late to finish it.

Check out my full review.


*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.*

Instagram:
I love being able to say I’ve already had my first five star read of 2022. The High House is a dystopian lit about climate change but really it’s so much more. Exquisitely sad and beautiful, featuring a small boy who loves birds - a pair of nesting egrets specifically (not the heron on the cover). Featured with my Allay green lamp I use to ease and prevent migraines because you know what’s a migraine trigger? Weather!
Referral link for $25 off an Allay lamp in my profile. Link also to purchase The High House in my profile.
*I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. I also earn $25 from Allay for every referral purchase.*

Blog:
I haven’t really been in the mood for dystopian literature since March of 2020, preferring a bit more escapism in my reading. But the cover of this book featuring that gorgeous egret really drew me in when I was browsing NetGalley. And I thought that maybe a book about a dystopia brought on just by climate change would be different enough to still work for me. Plus I had my fingers crossed it would involve birds after featuring one so strongly on the cover. What I found was a book about trials different enough from our own that it gave me distance and yet with meaningful moments that took my breath away with their relevance. It was like eating a very delicious chocolate cake and then sometimes getting mouthfuls that are even more delicious because they have surprising ooey gooey pockets of liquid chocolate.

“All I can think is that what’s different now is that no one can claim this is progress.”
(loc 1308)

The High House is a coastal summer home inherited by an environmental academic named Francesca. In spite of being coastal, it is, as the name implies, on high ground. She can see what’s coming, even though others won’t listen to her. So, while she keeps trying to bring about change to prevent it, she also secretly sets up the high house for her stepdaughter Caro and her son Pauly (who is 14 years younger than Caro). She also hires on the local elderly groundskeeper who is very wise in the old ways, Grandy, and by extension his university-aged granddaughter, Sally. I thought the book was going to be mostly set in the now of these folks living together after the flooding. But really it was largely these characters looking backward at the years just before the event, and through the event. How they came to be the way they are now. Sally, Caro, and Pauly all take turns narrating.

It’s difficult to explain how beautiful this book is without spoiling it. It’s no like the ending is a surprise or a twist but rather it takes reading the book in its entirely to get what the book is saying. And what it is saying is just simply gorgeous. In a sad way. I suppose what I can say is that this book depicts complex grief without ever really saying that’s what it’s doing. And it’s exquisite.

And the birds. Pauly loves birds, and it’s his knowledge and genuine love of them that lets everyone else know a bit of what they’re talking about when they talk about the birds. The heron on the cover is a bit of a flaw in cover design, because the birds that are actually important to the story are a pair of egrets. is They have a very important role that, again, was devastatingly exquisite. (We don’t see any harm come to the birds, and it’s a bit up in the air if any does).

This was a gorgeous book that I found comforting the way a sad movie can sometimes be. I stayed up far too late to finish it, because I just simply couldn’t look away. If you love nature and question what can remain for humans after large changes, pick this one up and let yourself get swept away.

5 out of 5 stars

Climate/environmental fiction often lends itself to the climactic moment of expected destruction; a moment full of banality, propelling readers past recognition of its known physical environment. The before & after are simply extracurricular to the aforementioned leveling moment.

THE HIGH HOUSE felt different. It holds a narrative so elusive, it’s almost unimaginable, still while strangely stoking your anxieties into a feeling of reassurance. This fragmented execution allows for a progression that eventually coheres to devastating effect.

Greengrass’ efforts to showcase the return on moral investment—or more so, the outcome without such an expenditure—through authoring such literature does not fall victim to oversimplification. It will exhaust readers into a panic so subliminal that it’ll fill their deepest cognitive cracks, forcing a real-life reckoning when next presented with the over consuming, cyclical, patterns life has set. The same patterns we’ve already deferred payment on for too long while continuing to seek any sort of validation for such decimation. (Also, the writing is exquisite.)

TL;DR: I recommend this novel with the ferocity of a t-shirt cannon at an NCAA basketball game.

In the wilderness of markings this novel left me with, I’ll forever hold on to this:

“In the end, we always chose ourselves. Or our children. We are only here because Francesca couldn’t bear the thought of Pauly drowning, but the high house isn’t an ark. We aren’t really saved. We are only the last ones, waiting.”

Caro lost her mother when she was very young and her father remarried Francesca. They eventually have Caro’s half-brother Pauly. When their parents go away on a trip and a major weather event occurs with flooding they are in a building that collapses while they are in it.

Caro receives a message to go to The High House, that Francesca built for Pauly where for the time being they should be safe. They arrive and Grandy and Sally are there as caretakers and to help the two children transition to their new home and deal with the loss of the parents.

Provisions have been made from food, to toys for Pauly, as Francesca knew this would eventually happen. The 4 people in this house navigate this new world and as storms continue, they do not know what has happened to their village or their country.

This is a very interesting take on Climate Fiction with a dystopian feel to it. It is very quiet, as I find many English books are. There is a lot to think about as you read this story, especially with the multi-POVs. I am not sure how I came across this one, but this was an enjoyable read for this genre.

Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The High House starts slowly but stick with it. Greengrass soon builds her story and pulls a variety of threads together in this lovely and sad and believable portrayal of a time when it is dramatically foreseeable that human habitation of earth will end due to climate change. Francesca is Caro's stepmother. She is a world renowned expert on climate change, the one called to comment on national tv and at global conferences. Francesca certainly started this work at a time when significant lifestyle and manufacturing changes would have made a difference, but by the time this story begins, it is too late. People still shop and work, go to college and send money to places where natural disasters take their toll. Refugees from destroyed areas is still just visible on the news and does not affect all lives. So, many continue to behave as if their lives will not change. It is a problem for other people and places. Except for Francesca and her husband. They have added Paul to their family, Caro's half brother. Caro adores him and often takes care of him. When Caro is 18, she quits school and accepts more responsibility for Paul's care. About the same time Francesca and her father tell her she needs to take care of him while they spend more time at High House, a ramshackle old farmhouse with a broken mill wheel and a tide pool with a broken sluice gate. It has a weedy old orchard a barn and nothing has been kept up. That is how Caro remembers her beloved High House, near a seaside/riverside village in England. Then one day, Caro's father calls and urgently tells her to take Paul and to make their way to High House. There is still bus service. When they arrive, a village girl, Sally and her grandfather, Grandy greet them. And, the dystopian part of the novel with more disasters in Europe starts -- with a slow but sure detachment from the world as Internet disappears, the tourists stop coming to the village, and Caro's and Pauly's world shrinks and shrinks. This is a narrative that rings true, the characters developed and well-drawn, the story sad, but also heartwarming.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass is a bruising piece of climate fiction that feels like a cautionary tale. I can’t stop thinking about it. Thank you @scribnerbooks for the gifted copy!

I quickly attached to the small cast: Caro and her younger brother Pauly, who recently lost their parents in a devastating weather event, plus a caretaker named Grandy and his granddaughter Sally.

All four live in “The High House” in a small town at risk of destruction from flooding. They grapple with the ever-present fear of running out of supplies and how to survive long-term.

I was impressed by how the author perfectly evoked the big, existential feelings and the more precise emotions tied to loss and fear. The story is quite terrifying and uncomfortable because it is believable. While it seems apocalyptic, the events could absolutely happen.

The vignette style + relatively short length + emotional investment = me devouring the whole book in one night. This hooks you and doesn’t let go until you’re left with an aching heart on the last page.

I recommend The High House for fans of climate fiction, multiple POVs, and near-future stories.

Wow! This was fantastic. Beautifully written, strong characters, and incredibly atmospheric. Such a timely, gentle, but unflinching imagining of what environmental disasters in the time of climate change will do to our society and relationships.

“We were protected by our houses and our educations and our high-street shopping centers. We had the habit of luck and power, and couldn't understand that they were not our right. We saw that the situation was bad, elsewhere, but surely things would work out, because didn't they always, for us? We were paralyzed, unable to plan either for a future in which all was well, or one in which it wasn't.”

The High House is the story of four people -- Caro, her half-brother Pauly, Sally, and her grandfather Grandy -- attempting to survive the aftermath of a climate change disaster. The High House was a vacation home until Caro's stepmother Francesca, a climate activist, began preparing the home for an inevitable natural disaster. When Francesca and Caro's father fall victim to a faraway flood, Caro and Pauly make their way to the High House, finding its caretakers Sally and Grandy awaiting their arrival. Together, the four of them try to make a life in an irrevocably changed world.

The High House is a quiet book, but also one that screams, demanding that the reader sit up and pay attention. Through startling imagery and insightful prose, Greengrass forces readers to acknowledge the current state of our world and the path we're on, and to contemplate where that path might lead our own children. It's a bleak picture, and Greengrass doesn't shy away from it.

“The early springs and too-long summers, the sudden, unpredictable winters that came from nowhere and brought floods or ice or wind, or didn't come, so that there was only day after day of sticky dampness and the leaves rotting on the trees and the birds still singing in December, nesting, until the snow came at last and, having overlooked migration, they froze on the branches, and they died.”

Exploring themes of motherhood and family, the book starts off strongly but meanders a bit in the second half. I would have enjoyed deeper character work and a bit more differentiation between Caro's and Sally's voices, although through them Greengrass's points are consistently clear and well-made. The High House is a thought-provoking and important novel about the ramifications of climate change on an immediate, close scale, a devastating book with heartbreaking humanity at its core. Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review.