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The Brief History of the Dead

By Kevin Brockmeier

(26)

| eBook | 9781848546318

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Book Description

'Remember me when I'm gone' just took on a whole new meaning . . . Laura Byrd is in trouble. Three weeks ago she and her friends found themselves alone in one of the coldest, most remote places on earth. Her friends set out in search of help, and now Laura realises that they are not coming back. SContinue

Critics

Living on cola

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier 253pp, John Murray, £12.99 The Truth About Celia, Kevin Brockmeier's first novel for adults, was about what happens when a little girl disappears. The Brief History of the Dead is about what happens w ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

Welcome to Limbo

HERE is a novel with an intriguing premise: that humans are divided into three categories, comprising those who are still alive, those who have died but live on in the memories of the living, and those who are dead and forgotten. In "The Brief Histor ... (read full critics)

nytimes published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

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8 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

My thoughts

I enjoyed this bittersweet book about memory, family, friends, life and death and how just knowing people - even from a distance - makes a difference. I also liked the alternating chapters between the events in the City and Laura Byrd's struggles in Antarctica.

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krin5292 said on Nov 8, 2007 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Meh.

The book was interesting but the ending was horrible. it left too many open ends. it let me down.

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Ai Speechie said on Jun 15, 2011 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

I usually disagree with the axiom "Show, don't tell", but this book proves it's an important consideration.

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pktechgirl said on Jun 7, 2010 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

5/10
(English Below)
Mah! Un vero peccato. L'idea di base e' molto originale, (l'esistenza di una città di morti, che continuano a "vivere" da morti solo finché sono ricordati da qualcuno che ancora morto non e'), ma e' l'esecuzione il problema.
Lingua molto banale, storia non banale, ma ra ... (continue)

5/10
(English Below)
Mah! Un vero peccato. L'idea di base e' molto originale, (l'esistenza di una città di morti, che continuano a "vivere" da morti solo finché sono ricordati da qualcuno che ancora morto non e'), ma e' l'esecuzione il problema.
Lingua molto banale, storia non banale, ma raccontata male, molte domande senza risposta. No. Proprio no.
E' il classico caso di un un qualcosa che avrebbe potuto essere e non e'.
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I was disappointed by this book. The idea behind it was a good one, but the execution was very poor.
The book tells the story of a city where people who die in our world seem to live a new life, as long as someone remembers them in the "real" world. All is well, but then a plague exterminates almost everyone on Earth, and the city starts shrinking, because (almost) nobody is left to remember.
Nice, right? Nope. Sloppy language, storyline with many questions left unanswered, characters that are very difficult to empathize with, or even be interested in...
This is a classic example of something which could have been great, but that dramatically missed its chance.

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Demonio Pellegrino said on Oct 24, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Slow start but good read...great mix between the "nether world" and the end of the world..

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Gail Paris said on Oct 7, 2008 about the Audio CD edition | Add your feedback

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***

"i know what you meant, honey, but i cant give you an answer. i don't think anybody could.
'what are we doing here?' for that matter, what were we doing there? why were we ever anywhere at all? i think the only thing we can do is stop asking impossible questions and just make the best of it,' h ... (continue)

"i know what you meant, honey, but i cant give you an answer. i don't think anybody could.
'what are we doing here?' for that matter, what were we doing there? why were we ever anywhere at all? i think the only thing we can do is stop asking impossible questions and just make the best of it,' he said." pp.76
"there was one part of him that believed that God truly was love, that the equation was really that simple. but there was another part of him that believed that love was too small a force: too small for God and too small for what people needed of Him. the first part said that the love of God was like sunlight and water to us: it strengthened us, filled us out, gave us color. it was only when we rejected that love, when we shut ourselves away from it, that we withered in on ourselves and lost our joy in Creation. [...] it's not the love of God that nourishes us, it's the hope of God. it is hope of any kind. hope and love are two separate forces, whether you're talking about God or whether you're talking about human beings. [...] insofar as love generates hope, perhaps, the second part said. but love doesn't always generate hope. anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much love or too little. you can have love that parches, love that defeats. you can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. it's like your sunlight and water -- the wrong kind of love is just as likely too stifle hope as it is to nourish it." pp.108
"it was one of those mind-emptyingly repetitious activities that people take up in prder to suppress their anxiety. some people rocked back and forth,
or dabced, or drummed their fingers on a tabletop. some people exercised with heavy marchinery. laura paced." pp.128
"[...] they were like these little knots that i couldn't unfasten. finally i decided that if i was going to die i needed to be in unfamiliar surroundings. maybe because i was getting ready to move into the most unfamiliar surrounding of all". pp.131-132
"that was what insomnia was, father all -- an excess of consciousness, an excess of life." pp.207
"but whenever she would come into contact with someone new, someone whose stroies she didn't already know by heart, sooner or later that person
would start talking about days gone by, and she would get the sad, sickeneing feeling that too much had already happened to him and it was far too late for her to ever catch up. how could she ever hope to know someone whose entrie life up to the present is already a memory?" pp.219
"the body was the material component of a person, the soul was the nonmaterial component. the spirit was simply the connecting line. [...]
when you died, the connecting line of the spirit snapped, and what reminded of you was simply the body on one side -- a heap of clay and minerals -- and the soul on the other. the spirit was nothing more than a function of their interaction, like the ripples that formed where the wind blew over the water. if you took away the wind, and you took away the water, the ripples would vanish." pp.244-245
"but why did he remember only the things in his life that had hurt him? why couldn't he remember the things that had given him joy or caused him to
smilke: the jokes he had heard, the songs that had made him lift his arms in the air, the people who had loved him, whose cheeks he had touched with his fingers?" pp.249

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blackgoldfish~BBM~ said on Mar 15, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback