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The Brief History of the Dead Kevin Brockmeier 9780719568183 Books

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The Brief History of the Dead Kevin Brockmeier 9780719568183 Books

Kevin Brockmeier's novel about memory as a function of human consciousness, and of individual memories as both depositories and creators of identity, is centered on a fascinating thesis. It hung together well enough for me to want to read it through to the end, but not well enough for me to get terribly excited about having done so. The thesis is this: When someone dies, he or she goes to a city that is very much like any (American) city you care to mention, with the exception that its inhabitants are there only for as long as they retain a place in the memory of a living person. When the last person to remember them dies, they are gone, too. They don't die, since they are already dead. They are just never seen again. This sets up a book-length meditation, which gets more explicit as the novel progresses, on memory, memories, ambition, loss, and the building and rebuilding of relationships. It's interesting. Not great, but interesting, and I found myself wishing that Brockmeier had done more with it.

Perhaps because the themes at its core--life, death, memory--are so big, they seem ultimately to get away from the author. The novel starts along two parallel tracks, telling the story of the city where the remembered dead carry on an existence much like that of the living, and the story of Laura Byrd, an environmental biologist working for the Coca-Cola Company at a research station in Antarctica (which by now has been privatized). One great advantage of being in the frozen continent is that you are largely, though perhaps not entirely, immune from developments in the rest of the world. This fact is crucial to the convergence of the two stories, but is also complicated by the fact that the rationale for the Antarctica station's existence in the first place seems far-fetched. Indeed, the whole Coca-Cola angle, which is crucial to the story, verges on the farcical. And yet this is a much more serious novel than that, so the divergence is striking. The coming-together of the two stories works at first, but then it doesn't, almost as if the author was not sure how to capture the logical extension of the very interesting premise on which his novel is based.

Some of Brockmeier's descriptions fell flat, but I would still say that the novel is generally well written and interesting, even if I ultimately found it somewhat unsatisfying. It did get me thinking: Given the fact that I come from a generally long-lived family, perhaps an afterlife limbo such as the one proposed in this novel wouldn't be such a bad thing, at least until my last descendant to have personally known me takes up residence in the city. I'm not sure where I'd go at that point. When there is no more memory of me, I guess there is no more me. Unless, of course, there is a different sort of after-afterlife for those who are retained in the memory of the remembered dead. If not, well, I'd never know, would I?

I saved this book to read in Antarctica. It seemed a safer bet to read it in the locale of that half of the novel rather than wait to find out whether or not I can sit on the porch with a novel after I'm dead, even if people remember me.


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The Brief History of the Dead Kevin Brockmeier 9780719568183 Books Reviews

Mr. Brockmeier's novel reminded me of the late Ray Bradbury's work. The story occurs sometime in the not-too-distant future. A highly contagious, deadly virus called "The Blink" is rapidly spreading around the world. People are dying left and right. As if that's not enough of a downer, global warming is melting the polar ice caps and there's a Noah's Ark's worth of animals that are now extinct. The author mixes glimpses of various characters' lives and an element of the surreal. The story skips back and forth between the central character, Laura Byrd, and the dead inhabitants of the City which is a kind of way station before the dead move on to... whatever. It's never explained. The dead inhabitants, better known as the living-dead, only disappear and move on when the last person alive to know them dies. The reader is exposed to about a half dozen vignettes of various living-dead people. Though their daily lives are removed from disease and want, they still ruminate about their pasts. The chapters alternate between the living-dead and Laura Byrd. The lady is certainly stuck between a rock and a hard place. She's stranded alone in Antarctic and eventually sets out on an excruciating journey to find other people. It isn't a stroll through Disney World that's for sure.

The brief stories of each living-dead character as well as the living Laura Byrd are very well done. The author has an excellent ability to present each person as their own unique believable individual. The central theme to the book is about the people. I imagine many readers are going to be upset at how Mr. Brockmeier ended his work. The book is more an attempt at fleshing out different characters personalities and challenging the reader to see other people's viewpoints than it is an adventure with a satisfying conclusion. I guess it could be called an artsy-fartsy work. Mr. Brockmeier's short novel is very well written with a decidedly melancholy tone. It's thought-provoking but a little of a downer.
I'm late to this party, but had the pleasure of reading this without having read reviews or knowing the plot. It is a very clever combination of dystopian and quasi-utopian novel. Earth's population is being wiped out by plague, but the deceased are landing in a nether world that is very much like the real world, where people carry on, often doing things they had dreamed of on earth, such as opening a cafe or coming to a renewed appreciation of their marriage, when a couple is reunited. This world is quite fluid with people disappearing as suddenly as they appeared, but the population always being replenished by the newly dead. Then suddenly, the place empties out, with a few thousand souls left. The final part of the story alternates between the nether world and the antarctic where a young woman left alone in a research station, when her colleagues go to re-establish contact with the rest of the world after the communication equipment stops working and power cells run down, makes a dangerous trek to the coast. I just found this to be a very original book, well written, and propelled along by an intriguing plot.
Kevin Brockmeier's novel about memory as a function of human consciousness, and of individual memories as both depositories and creators of identity, is centered on a fascinating thesis. It hung together well enough for me to want to read it through to the end, but not well enough for me to get terribly excited about having done so. The thesis is this When someone dies, he or she goes to a city that is very much like any (American) city you care to mention, with the exception that its inhabitants are there only for as long as they retain a place in the memory of a living person. When the last person to remember them dies, they are gone, too. They don't die, since they are already dead. They are just never seen again. This sets up a book-length meditation, which gets more explicit as the novel progresses, on memory, memories, ambition, loss, and the building and rebuilding of relationships. It's interesting. Not great, but interesting, and I found myself wishing that Brockmeier had done more with it.

Perhaps because the themes at its core--life, death, memory--are so big, they seem ultimately to get away from the author. The novel starts along two parallel tracks, telling the story of the city where the remembered dead carry on an existence much like that of the living, and the story of Laura Byrd, an environmental biologist working for the Coca-Cola Company at a research station in Antarctica (which by now has been privatized). One great advantage of being in the frozen continent is that you are largely, though perhaps not entirely, immune from developments in the rest of the world. This fact is crucial to the convergence of the two stories, but is also complicated by the fact that the rationale for the Antarctica station's existence in the first place seems far-fetched. Indeed, the whole Coca-Cola angle, which is crucial to the story, verges on the farcical. And yet this is a much more serious novel than that, so the divergence is striking. The coming-together of the two stories works at first, but then it doesn't, almost as if the author was not sure how to capture the logical extension of the very interesting premise on which his novel is based.

Some of Brockmeier's descriptions fell flat, but I would still say that the novel is generally well written and interesting, even if I ultimately found it somewhat unsatisfying. It did get me thinking Given the fact that I come from a generally long-lived family, perhaps an afterlife limbo such as the one proposed in this novel wouldn't be such a bad thing, at least until my last descendant to have personally known me takes up residence in the city. I'm not sure where I'd go at that point. When there is no more memory of me, I guess there is no more me. Unless, of course, there is a different sort of after-afterlife for those who are retained in the memory of the remembered dead. If not, well, I'd never know, would I?

I saved this book to read in Antarctica. It seemed a safer bet to read it in the locale of that half of the novel rather than wait to find out whether or not I can sit on the porch with a novel after I'm dead, even if people remember me.