The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Finding The Brief History of the Dead was a complete stroke of luck. The cover image intrigued me, so I ordered it from my book club. (If you like a variety of surprising and intriguing books, you should check out Quality Paperback Books.) What I found inside was intriguing, a tale of death and life, a fable of relationships and memories.

The whole book is based on a belief held in some African societies: once you die, you still live in the memories of those left behind on earth. These recently passed, if they can be called to mind or talked about in stories, are living-dead. Once the last person on earth who knew them dies, they pass on to the truly dead. Brockmeier takes this belief and creates a place where people come after death, a city of the dead. Many people live and work there like they did in life. They rejoin their families, they continue on as though they were living. One day, people start disappearing at a rapid rate, and the city itself looks to be shrinking. Luka Sims, newspaperman, is determined to find out what is going on with the city and where the people are disappearing to. What is going on in the world of the living that is causing so many to die, and of those, so many of the dead to disappear?

The whole story is like a richly woven fabric of characters and inter-connectivity. There is a complexity to the tale that you wouldn’t expect from something so simply written. After about half way through the book I figured out the “surprise” twist, but it didn’t diminish how much I liked the book at all. In fact, I loved the way every player down to the random teenager in the street were connected. It's a nice thought.

The ideas and lessons in this book found me at a time when I needed them most. I had recently lost my aunt to a very difficult fight with cancer and the story Kevin Brockmeier told in The Brief History of the Dead was a poignant one for me. While that was the case for me, I think it would have been just as amazing had I read it at any other time. The idea, the color, the underlying truth of the story is truly universal. Not only that, it is told without any kind of syrupy Oprah Book Club nonsense, so never did I feel like my heartstrings were being pulled in any artificial way. I can’t wait to see what else Kevin Brockmeier has to offer.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a quirky tale told with great care. It’s not often you find a book about death that makes you feel good too.