Uhm.. Actually, you can be. There's a lot of people who are honest when answering that question. They just do it in ways that don't come across so upsetting or depressing.

Many people sugarcoat their answers to be more palatable for a greeting, or for a start of a conversation. It can also just be a polite way of giving others an out for a potential depressing conversation they may not want to be a part of.

These responses usually come in forms like, - "How are you?/How's it going?" - "Could be better." "It's definitely going." "I'm still alive." "I'm getting there." "New day, new problems." "Well, I'm still here." "Same old." "It's not all sunshine." "It's moving along". "It is what it is." "Not great but I'll survive." "Hoping tomorrow comes quickly." And many more responses like this. These are all ways of basically saying "Things are kinda/very shit at the moment for me". But they just don't go into detail about it. They are being honest, without the extra information.

If the other person doesn't want to go further into this then they may just responed with something like "I feel you", or "That's relatable", or "Yeh, that's life". Which are basically ways of saying "I acknowledge things aren't easy right now", without having to go into a conversation about it. Not everyone has the emotional energy to deal with conversations like that in that moment and that's okay.

However, people tend to also misunderstand what these greetings are for.

Like most of behaviours stored under the label of "good manners" it's a bid for positive connection. Like "hey fellow stranger, let's connect in this tiny field to confirm we're both safe:)" - it's an equivalent of animals scenting one another.

When someone says "How are you?" and you answer is "Good. How are you?" That's a little connection you two just made that makes the following interaction easier. It signals to both of you that the other person is safe to interact with.

When your answer to "How are you?" is one of the "Still alive" variety without spilling your guts at them, the other person can commiserate in the "Yeah tell me about it" way, and it's the same thing - it's safe to interact.

maybe grace’s obscenely rich parents had him when they were there on vacation, and when they realized he couldn’t leave the island, they left him there with a local family who was paid well to take him in, but the whole thing is too painful for them so they never visit. maybe grace doesn’t know he’s adopted. maybe his widow’s bay family feels weird about the money, as it’s far in excess to the resources other people in widow’s bay have. maybe that’s why grace’s parents picked them. they’re humble

(i was raised on the boxcar children and nancy drew. this kind of feels like that sort of vibe.)

anyway. all of that to say: the story opens with grace pretty much in the same place, a disgrace in the scientific community, teaching at a public school. except the public school is in widow’s bay, not san francisco.

he still likes the fog, even though people here get weird about it.

he believes in the curse, but only because every time he’s tried to leave the island, he’s almost died & had to be hospitalized. the same for every other born-islander. that’s just science.

after the kerfuffle with the paper, the university decides to shut down the widow’s bay campus. it bleeds money, and the terms of the endowment include “opportunities for scientific advancement for residents of widow’s bay” or something. the original donors of the endowment are gone now, and the current manager is in agreement: the residents of widow’s bay can access opportunities for scientific advancement via a new scholarship fund for a mainland course of study. they don’t know about the curse, so.

so now grace is *the* science teacher at widow’s bay school, because there’s so few kids per grade. it’s not exactly a one-room schoolhouse, but he has every student in town across six classes per day with differentiated instruction based on grade level.

it’s…fine.

the new mayor is trying to bring in tourists to town. grace wishes the mayor’s kid would apply his clearly inherited bullheadedness to being interested in class.

and then, one day: the bell starts tolling.

or, rather, the bell starts tolling, but only a few people hear it: tom, patricia, rosemary—and grace.

of course he’s heard the stories. he grew up here. “the island will make its needs known. one soul for each bell toll.”

except the bell just doesn’t stop ringing.

it doesn’t stop on the hour, and it’s not chiming at the top of the hour, which clues grace into something being hinky.

he can hear it, and his students look at him like he’s nuts when he asks them if they can, and make jokes about how it’s too bad The Home is closed because maybe he needs to go there.

the bell just keeps tolling. grace isn’t really sure when the number of tolls exceeds the population of the town, because his ears are ringing and his brain is buzzing and he lost count when he tried to bring order back to his classroom—and failed, because somebody brought up the petrova line and how their dad overheard wyck at the tavern saying they were all gonna die. when isn’t wyck saying they’re all gonna die, grace thinks, perhaps uncharitably. fortunately, it was last period. perhaps unfortunately, it was the oldest group, which includes evan loftis. grace isn’t surprised when there’s a knock on his door after dinner that night and he finds the mayor on his doorstep.

he is surprised, however, to find that the mayor isn’t out for his job. he just wanted to confirm that grace is also hearing the bells, and that the bells haven’t let up.

but the fact of the matter is: the number of tolls exceeds the population of widow’s bay. then the number of people who have ever lived in widow’s bay, born or transplant, since the first settlers. then, the population of the nearest large city on the mainland, and the state it’s in. then the eastern seaboard. then—

then, there’s a racket down at the harbor. despite mayor tom’s efforts to increase tourism, they don’t get a lot of superyacht traffic. or any at all, actually.

grace is sorting the youngest class’s giant crayons out of the uppers’ bin of robotics wires when a presence appears in his classroom.

she introduces herself as eva stratt and says she needs his help to save the world.

he scoffs, they go back and forth, he runs for his bicycle, she beats him to it, and then the guy grace assumes is a bodyguard of some sort says, “you hear the bells, don’t you.”

it’s not a question.

grace curses the island’s infernal gossip mill and mayor tom and whatever cosmic joke had him being born on this hunk of rock until the man gestures to his ears.

“not everybody can. but everyone who does has a sort of immediate-onset auditory processing disorder that all started at the same time. you’re straining to sort through what you’re hearing. it’s making you grumpy. your eyebrow crease is getting worse, man, and i don’t even know you.”

holy shit.

they’ve got a team of scientists working on noise-isolating technology for the bells, which started out being audible in widow’s bay but now can be heard worldwide by a select few people. in widow’s bay, only four people can hear them; that’s less than 1% of the town. the percentage decreases the further one gets from widow’s bay.

each person has a skill that can benefit petrova line research—which, stratt says and the bodyguard nods, is gonna kill us all, as it turns out.

aw, nuts, grace thinks. wyck’s gonna be insufferable when he finds out he was right.

so then grace tells the team that if they want him to figure out what the petrova line samples are, his lab has to be here, no questions, no arguments. stratt nods definitively. the bodyguard sighs as he looks around at what of widow’s bay he can see.

the project commandeers the old university satellite campus.

grace feels like he can breathe again as he steps into his old lab. well, maybe not; the lab’s been filled with argon gas, and if he punctures his protective suit, he’s toast.

his excitement proves to be short-lived when he discovers the matter to be mainly water.

stratt finds him contemplating the ironies of the universe on the back steps of the building where the adjuncts used to gather to smoke, a liminal place of arriving and leaving and nicotine residue.

by the end of the next day, she’s hired a new science teacher for widow’s bay school—grace doesn’t know how, maybe the school board was amenable to a representative of every government on the planet (and the accompanying budget)—and grace is once again plugging his electric kettle into the outlet of the small workroom he’d claimed as his office eons ago, eons before.

there’s no home improvement store on the island, so he scavenges what he needs for the blackout box from people’s garages and junk drawers and kitchens. ruth doesn’t have any plywood, but she sends evan loftis over one afternoon with seven boxes of foil and a little paper bag that grace sort of wishes was magic mushrooms but turns out to be one of her homemade tea blends. fortunately, it’s one that steeps in five minutes, not twenty-five.

carl—because that’s the bodyguard’s name—and he insists he’s not a bodyguard—loves it, and sets up shop in the kitchen at grace’s house to bake some zucchini loaf for ruth. he brings in the extras to the lab. grace tells him that he’s missed his calling, being a bodyguard instead of a baker. carl just smirks.

when stratt arrives to debrief after grace’s (and carl’s! even if he doesn’t want coauthor credit on the paper they’re certainly going to publish!) discovery, she does that definitive nod of hers, then declares widow’s bay the base of operations for project hail mary. they were going to commandeer an aircraft carrier, but grace can’t leave, and he’s kind of the brains of the operation now, and besides, it’s scenic, and not very populated.

mayor tom is ecstatic. it may not be tourism, exactly, but it will bring in regular economic activity.

maybe the island will finally get wifi.

it’s about right, that the island will get wifi just in time to witness the end of the world.

patricia tries to be understanding. she really, really does. she knows what it’s like to be misunderstood, ignored, overlooked, not taken seriously. she gets it.

but this is pushing her limits. and her manners.

“hello!” she says loudly, putting her gut into it, rapping her knuckles on the weathered wood of the bar. “i’ve been here an hour! do you know how much longer it will be on the chicken parm?”

Perfect gothic sci fi book, no notes. When I say gothic though I do mean everything that entails. Fucked up families, coercive behavior, the nature of leeches and parasites, loss of self and identity to the other. Shit was good and I do not want to spoil it for anyone. Clues are slowly given to you about the world you’re in, and there are many sentences where I had to go back a reread it to verify how it changed the world building. Truly a fascinating debut novel. If you’re into parasites, gothic originals, body horror, pathology and truly inventive world building I’d recommend “Leech” by Hiron Ennes to you in a heartbeat.