A Brief History of the Dead

A Brief History of the Dead
Reviewed by Chung-Yi Chang

What I am reading now is a book called A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. When I first saw the book cover, which pictures an invincible man wearing a long black coat with only his hands visible, it truly intrigued me. Although I bought this book before summer began, I haven’t had a chance to read it until now but so far, it has been a page turner for me. I am about two thirds through the book, which has about two-fifty pages.

Let me give you a brief history of A Brief History of the Dead. In the book, between life and death, there is a middle ground where people live called “The City”. The dead live in The City, and they can live there as long as someone alive on earth still remembers them. No one knows how big The City is because no one has seen the edge of it. Also, no one knows where they go after those alive have completely forgotten them. In The City, there are always people arriving each day and The City's only newspaper, run by Luka Sims, brings news from the other side to those living in the afterlife. Recent arrivals tell of a virus call “the blinks” which is sweeping through Asia, and suddenly, The City is quickly overrun by new residents who quickly disappear as all of those who remember them being to die, too.

As the population of the city dramatically declines, a few people remaining, including Luka Sims, find out that they all share a connection - they have all been kept alive in The City because they are all remembered by a woman named Laura Byrd, who is trapped on an Antarctica research station with her supplies running low. Brockmeier fuses two story of the dead and the live beautifully into a romantic novel.

The book also mentions a very interesting point which is how many people could you remember, if you sat down and tried to make a list? We're not just talking about folks you know well, but anyone whose face you can conjure up—your mail carrier, that girl at the coffee shop, an old teacher. One character in the book, Pucket, tries to do just that and comes up with an estimated number around fifty-thousand.

So far it has been a thrilling book, if you like mystery and the struggle between life and death, then A Brief History of the Dead is must read for you in your spare time!