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72nd out of 185 books
—
173 voters
How the Dead Live
by
Will Self
Will Self has one of literature's most astonishing imaginations, and in How the Dead Live his talent has come to full flower. Lily Bloom is an angry, aging American transplanted to England, now losing her battle with cancer. Attended by nurses and her two daughters -- lumpy Charlotte, a dour, successful businesswoman, and beautiful Natasha, a junkie -- Lily takes us on a s...more
Paperback, 404 pages
Published
August 31st 2000
by Grove Press
(first published 2000)
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117th out of 161 books
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49 voters
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Some thoughts on Will Self’s How The Dead Live. The first 280 or so pages deliver the constant narrative pleasure of some illicit drug. One is constantly buoyed along by the wonderful storytelling.
American Lily Bloom, twice-married, now a widow living in London, is dying of cancer--and then stone dead of it. We are there at her long deathbed scene after which she finds herself non-living in a London of the astral plane in her subtle body. We share her last days and the decade or so of her afterl...more
American Lily Bloom, twice-married, now a widow living in London, is dying of cancer--and then stone dead of it. We are there at her long deathbed scene after which she finds herself non-living in a London of the astral plane in her subtle body. We share her last days and the decade or so of her afterl...more
You're always going to have at least an unusual plot line setting or protagonist in a Self novel and this is no exception. You're told the story of Lily Bloom as she sees it in life death and rebirth. I often feel with Will Self that there is something brilliant he is working at but he just misses pulling it off flawlessly. That isn't to say he isn't worth reading. He definitely is and his use of language even when he stumbles a bit is beautiful. I couldn't put out of my mind how much this is ba...more
Wow. That was horrible. Visceral, cruel, obnoxious. But somehow utterly compelling, hilarious and life affirming. My previous contact with Will Self was from TV, and I guess I expected something more Amis like, and less enthralling. How the Dead Live is about Lily Bloom - a chronicle of her late life, her death, and her afterlife. Her major accomplishments in a rather average life are her two daughters, who's lives she follows from death as they spiral in and out of control. The story is grippin...more
I don't know how to feel about this book. Will Self is one of those writers (another is Joyce Carole Oates) whose books I always approach with enthusiasm, but find about half the time I don't necessarily like or enjoy.
I love Self's premises and his ways of making me look at things from 'quirky' angles. I enjoy the way he writes, the way he uses language, and I really enjoyed parts of this book ... but in other parts I felt I had to work to make myself continue. A part of it is that he writes (q...more
I love Self's premises and his ways of making me look at things from 'quirky' angles. I enjoy the way he writes, the way he uses language, and I really enjoyed parts of this book ... but in other parts I felt I had to work to make myself continue. A part of it is that he writes (q...more
This is the latest in a long line of Will Self novel's I've read 'My Idea of Fun', 'Book of Dave' and also the short story collections 'Liver' and 'Walking to Hollywood'.
For what it's worth, I think it's one of my favourite yet. Despite the bleakness of the tone, I think it works brilliantly as a black comedy, with some real insight into the human condition with regards to the subject of death.
As ever, Self's writing can be dense and somewhat cryptic, but this novel is soon an addictive pursuit...more
For what it's worth, I think it's one of my favourite yet. Despite the bleakness of the tone, I think it works brilliantly as a black comedy, with some real insight into the human condition with regards to the subject of death.
As ever, Self's writing can be dense and somewhat cryptic, but this novel is soon an addictive pursuit...more
Dec 09, 2011
Shovelmonkey1
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who did not read The Quantity Theory of Insanity
Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by:
The Quantity theory of Insanity where this appears as a short story
I always run at Will Self books a bit like one of those annoying small yappie dogs that bounces up and down like they're on an invisible bit of elastic... well the ones that aren't now ensconced in expensive handbags anyway.
I do this because my brain always tells me that I love Will Self... stupid brain. Why do you always forget? I like the idea of liking Will Self and I generally like most of the premises for his twisted tales (of course there is always the exception to the rule, this exception...more
I do this because my brain always tells me that I love Will Self... stupid brain. Why do you always forget? I like the idea of liking Will Self and I generally like most of the premises for his twisted tales (of course there is always the exception to the rule, this exception...more
12 likes · like · see review
Sep 28, 2011
Nate D
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
lithopedia
Recommended to Nate D by:
the deathocracy
Shelves:
britain
A vast ichor-black death exhalation across the latter 20th century. Self's patter, his puns and asides and alliteration and word transformations and endless allusions to everything from lit to pop songs, sets up a deceptive burble behind which his unyielding cynicism dances. In fact though, moreso than the Dantean story of the dull disappointment of life bleeding into the dull disappointment of death (and beyond all locked in an endless cycle of drudge, it seems), this patter, this banter, seems...more
Still not really sure what I thought of this book. I've read a couple of Self's books before and I've enjoyed some (Dorian) and disliked others (My Idea of Fun). The concept alone was enough to keep me reading - I wanted to see where he would take this. The dull, dystopian view of the afterlife doesn't seem too far fetched in this day and age. I found his narrative distracting at times, especially his desire to fit in too many clever little rhymes and puns. What really bothered me, however, was...more
Wow! I had never read Will Self before and this was certainly a mammoth of an induction! This book should come with a warning - "Not for the faint hearted". There are some gruesome concepts to grapple with and some very direct language, which won't be to everyone's taste, but I found I liked the bravery of this novel and the creativity blew me away. I'd been getting slightly bored with some of the predictable plots and writing of the books I've been reading recently, but this one kept me on my t...more
Great - The story follows Lily Bloom's encounter with the afterlife after dying from cancer. After being transported to new lodgings near Dalston accompanied by her Aboriginal spirit guide Phar Lap Jones, Rude Boy her dead 9 year old son and a lithopedion foetus she soon starts to adapt and learn the ways of the dead.
Um, yes, you get the picture?
Actually, on re-reading this review, I realise I don't know what a lithopedion foetus is.
Wikipaedia to the rescue: A lithopedion (Greek: λίθος = stone...more
Um, yes, you get the picture?
Actually, on re-reading this review, I realise I don't know what a lithopedion foetus is.
Wikipaedia to the rescue: A lithopedion (Greek: λίθος = stone...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Well... I'm not quite sure what to say about this book. I bought it several years ago but didn't get around to reading it before now. It's my first Will Self book. I must say that during some parts of the book, I didn't feel like I quite got it.
The story is about the life, death and especially after-life of one Lily Bloom, a not to nice elderly woman who after having succumbed to cancer, experiences afterlife - which takes place in a London suburb. Death seems like being very like life - except...more
The story is about the life, death and especially after-life of one Lily Bloom, a not to nice elderly woman who after having succumbed to cancer, experiences afterlife - which takes place in a London suburb. Death seems like being very like life - except...more
This is the best WS novel (I did NOT like "Great Apes", for the record). He has a lavish and polished writing style, the pace and deep tone of this book are irresistable. It has been 5 years since I read this book and the imagery still floats in my mind.
It is a novel that blends the worlds of the living and the dead - in a way that I had never experienced before in book or film. Follows "Lily Blooms'" afterlife after she dies from cancer.
It is a novel that blends the worlds of the living and the dead - in a way that I had never experienced before in book or film. Follows "Lily Blooms'" afterlife after she dies from cancer.
A rather jaundiced world-view, which one suspects is the author's, but expressed by a cynically vulgar and amusingly angry part-Jewish American woman, born in the 1930s or so, who lives the latter part of her life in London, married and raising two impossible daughters (one a smug yuppie, the other a junkie), then dies of cancer there, and finds the afterlife consists of a shadowy and more threadbare version of the life she's already been living for two decades, albeit with an Australian aborigi...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Some nice touches, here, with Lily Bloom moving to Dulston, the suburb for the dead, afer expiring from cancer. Under her bead lie 'the fats' (all the weight she ever put on or lost in your life haunting your dead self after you die). But essentially it's all a bit, well, silly. There are better books about dying.
I love Will Self I really do, but this was absolutely unreadable. Phar Lap Jones irritated the shit out of me with his constant, "Yeh hey" and similar exclamations which were so distracting that I had to re-read the same page four or five times. I gave it two shots then consigned this book to the can.
Sort of like Martin Amis with a shot of Chuck Palahniuk: precocious, self-satisfied British wordplay tempered with dark American transgressivism. It also contains this excellent simile: "She smokes like a house on fire and she drinks as if she were trying to extinguish it."
Eerily accurate. I grew up just down the road from Crouch End, and can confirm that now the Oxfam shops are selectively stocked and every pub has pork belly on the menu, it is indeed choc-full of the living dead.
I thought they were kidding, but you really do need a thesaurus to read Will Self's writing. There's a great story in here somewhere, but it's lost amid his self-conscious effort to show you just how smart he is.
Such a disappointment. This had potential to be so much more. The overuse of literary devices absolutely killed this book. I skimmed most of it. There was no plot, the characters were toxic and there was a relentlessly punishing stream of conscience which caused me a great deal of discomfort. What a waste of time.
Better than Nabokov! What awesome language, and so well researched. Thoroughly cynical and entertaining. I'd read all of Will Self's other books. I don't care how trendy this shit is.
Not a very uplifting story, and doesn't have the same rye humor that Self usually has. But still. and interesting exploration of death and the after life in a modern imagining.
Even now I am struggling to clarify my thoughts on this book.
Yes... Lily Bloom is a very unpleasant, unlikeable protagonist. Yes... the vision that Self creates of the afterlife is more horrific (to me) than anything Dante threw together - I'd rather suffer being prodded by demons than the unrelenting banality of the world he describes (and as for the thought of the weight I've gained and lost over the years coming back to haunt me..!!!!).
I didn't really LIKE this book... but I couldn't put the...more
Yes... Lily Bloom is a very unpleasant, unlikeable protagonist. Yes... the vision that Self creates of the afterlife is more horrific (to me) than anything Dante threw together - I'd rather suffer being prodded by demons than the unrelenting banality of the world he describes (and as for the thought of the weight I've gained and lost over the years coming back to haunt me..!!!!).
I didn't really LIKE this book... but I couldn't put the...more
There were some brilliant lines, both laugh-out-loud & gorgeous, but overall I felt like the book was a collection of clever sentences & slapdash references to cultural touchstone moments that didn't add up to the sum of its parts.
Full of Self's viscous prose and noir humour. An incredible piece of imaginative fiction, but not for the faint-hearted.
I love when a fresh look at everything comes around. I thought the ending was lame but loved everything else.
The first half it's really funny and interesting, but the second half I can say it's really boring.
Sep 03, 2010
Misha
marked it as will-come-back-to-later-no-really
I'm reading this, I'm nearly finished with the section in which Lily is describing her own death from cancer, and I'm wondering what kind of old woman I'll be. Will I be a tragic figure, having lived a life alone and slowly watched all of my hopes and dreams waste away? That may be my greatest fear. Even scarier than sharks.
"After all of these years of being assured of my own loneliness, at last I know what it's like to be by myself."
7/6 I will pick this up again and finish it, but I'm a bit ove...more
"After all of these years of being assured of my own loneliness, at last I know what it's like to be by myself."
7/6 I will pick this up again and finish it, but I'm a bit ove...more
Mar 10, 2009
Patricia
added it
First Will Self book. Absolutely hilarious and pitch black.
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William Self is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School, Christ's College Finchley, and Exeter College, Oxford. He is married to journalist Deborah Orr.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
More about Will Self...
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
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“If the seventies were bulbous, and the eighties sharp, the nineties were nothing but bogus.”
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“Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the one thing I had to do in life.”
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