The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

First published in 2006

The Brief History of the Dead is a book that stayed with me long after I finished it. I don't understand why so many readers disliked it. Some apparently had a preconceived notion that the novel would mimic a particular movie or book they liked and were disappointed to find that it was a different story entirely. So be warned: don't expect this novel to be quite like anything else you've encountered. If you take it on its own terms, you might enjoy it. I certainly did.

This well-written, haunting story imagines a virus that wipes out all life on Earth.  The dead reside in a sort of limbo as long as someone on Earth remembers them.  Point of view shifts between the residents of limbo (who are winking out of existence as the people who remember them die) and the last survivor on Earth, a woman in the Arctic who is struggling not with the virus, but with isolation and her unforgiving environment.

Here's why I liked this novel: The concept is imaginative. The nature of the Limbo-like existence of the dead is a stimulating mystery through much of the novel, until the characters in Limbo realize what their continued existence (at least in their Limbo-like state) depends upon. The writing is vivid. The images of Laura Byrd fighting for her survival are haunting. The novel raises intriguing questions about the nature of death and its relationship to the memory of the dead among the living.  As I said, this novel not only held my attention but made me think.

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