The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier -- a book review

The Brief History of the Dead is the story of a city inhabited by the dead, but not all of the dead. The people inhabiting the city are the dead who are remembered by the living. To add to the peculiarity of their situation, the dead have recently been decimated by a pandemic plague among the living. It seems there may be only one person left alive on the Earth, a young woman named Laura Byrd.

At one point during the novel, a character among the dead sits down to figure out how many people each person remembers, and comes up with a figure somewhere around 40-50,000. If that sounds high, try thinking about everyone you've ever known or met up with often enough to have a memory imprint. Think of the person you see on the corner every day while you wait for a bus, or the child you were "best friends" with for a few weeks in the third grade, or the mailmen you've come to greet as familiar over a period of years.

Life among the dead is not what you'd expect, or at least not what I'd expect. People continue to go to work, run restaurants, and even panhandle. One man goes to a great deal of trouble to destroy some evidence there will soon be no one left to find. A recovered alcoholic continues to eschew beer with his lunch. An old married couple rekindles lost love. A man seeks out the library and old phone books from the city of the dead, looking for his long-dead brother.

Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is having a pretty tough time of things. She's alone in the Antarctic in a research station owned by the Coca-Cola company. She's been sent to the Antarctic on a research trip in the company of two other staff members, but the two men have gone off to see whether they can find out what has happened to their communications--no messages have come in for weeks, and the team was expecting to be retrieved.

The story is intriguing on its own, but additionally, the interior thoughts of the characters and the actions and thoughts of the people living in the city of the dead are beautifully realized.

Brockmeier has previously written a short-story collection, a novel, and a children's book. For more information about him and his work, see the following:

http://www.listeninglib.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=3313

http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/brockmeier/