Browsing the Bookshelves

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Brockmeier’s second novel, The Brief History of the Dead, is as intriguing and eerie as its title suggests.  The dead live in a city, not unlike a normal city, accept that it doesn’t seem to have any boundaries and all its habitants know they have died.  Each has his own story to tell of how he arrived in the city and each is affected in different ways by the experience of death.  Brockmeier manages to present the myriad, entrancing possibilities within a few short pages, hooking the reader from the very first.  The city, and its population, is intimately linked to the world of the living, and, indeed, the even numbered chapters of the book recount a story of the living while alternative chapters trace the changing fortunes of the city of the dead.  As the novel’s lyrical and harmonic qualities reveal themselves, Brockmeier weaves the two stories, and the characters, together in a way which ultimately, satisfying if a little predictable.

The premise of The Brief History of the Dead may seem like fantasy, but this is no typical fantasy saga. It is a tightly worked, highly structure novel which presents first, a picture of the very near future on earth that is as unsettling as is believable, and second, a hopeful, somewhat idealised view of another life.  If it seems a little over-worked at times, this is a same fault compared to the pleasure of reading a highly original and thought-provoking novel.