The High House is a stunning book, and my best book of 2022. Jessie Greengrass’s spare, lyrical novel is set in the near-future in a community that echoes our own—fragile, close to the sea, and slipping away. I walk the shoreline of Nantucket nearly every day and note its changes. I think endlessly about the climate crisis, but nothing has gripped me in the way The High House has.

Open this intriguing book and discover the story of four people attempting to make a home in the midst of an environmental disaster—Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe for now on their tall hill. Rising water threatens to destroy the town, but it does not happen the way you have seen in dystopian movies. It is all much simpler, much slower.

The High House is a beautiful novel about connection, love, parenthood, and what it means to retain your humanity in the face of terrifying change. It is a reminder that if we want to have any shot at a future on this planet, we must work together now.