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Oct 19, 2009

karen rated it:

i always want more. even when i enjoy a book - especially when i enjoy a book... i love the concept of this book, and while its true there are some implausibilities here, and while it gets a little thin in places, it is easy to overlook because it is such a delight to read. yes, a delight.

i am tacking on a little more to this sad and short excuse for a review because i was thinking about this book today, after i finished reading "on the beach". if anyone needs a dissertatio More...

11 comments like (22 people liked it)

Oct 16, 2007

Saucy rated it:

There are very few authors who write books that haunt me: Neil Gaiman, Kate Chopin. Add to that list Kevin Brockmeier. I didn't think that a book about the end of human civilization would have any affect on me; my ignorance led me into this novel fully unprepared for what I would encounter.

Set in the not-so-distant future, The Brief History of the Dead follows the story of a very big corporate "oops": Coca-Cola unintentionally spreads a virus that kills off the entire huma More...

2 comments like (21 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2008

Oceana2602 rated it:

Here's the story how I came by the best book I read in 2007:

So I'm standing at King's Cross station, waiting for a friend of mine to arrive by train. Oh, look, there's a Waterstones! They are having a 3 for the price of 2 sale, and there are two books that I wanted to buy anyway. Now, let's find a third one! This one looks pretty, and it isn't too heavy, gotta fly back tomorrow.
*buys books*

Great, my friend's train is an hour late. Let's read a book. That third one i More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2008

Tim rated it:

I picked up this book after listening to an episode of KCRW's To The Best Of Our Knowledge entitled "Apocalyptic Fiction" (mp3).

I had just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," and felt myself compelled to read a bit more "apocalyptic fiction." Unfortunately, the brutal grandeur of "The Road" set the bar too high. It seems unfair to compare the two books, but because I read them in succession I feel I must.

Where "The More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2007

Res rated it:

The one where when people die, they go to live in "the city" until no living person remembers them. Meanwhile, on earth, things are turning out very badly.

I loved the short story that became the first chapter. And there are so many beautifully observed moments that I found the book quite enjoyable while I was reading it. It was only afterwards that doubts began to creep up.

The real-world part of the story has two major implausibilities in it: why the company wou More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2007

Eric rated it:

I dearly wanted to love this book. The first chapter--establishing a vast city of the recently dead, an afterlife for everyone still remembered by the living--is amazing and beautiful. The second chapter flies off in another direction entirely, and plants us firmly in the ice and snow of antarctica. From there the novel alternates: each odd-numbered chapter explores the city of the dead from a new character's perspective, while the even-numbered chapters follow the adventures of the woman in Ant More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2008

Chuck rated it:

This novel beat out Water for Elephants for some award as one of the top books for 2006, plus it got amazing reviews and was a bestseller, so I figured I should read it to find out what all the fuss was about. And while I'm still not sure it's better than WFE (I mean, what is?), I'm willing to admit that it's pretty good. The writing is lyrical and lovely, and the author has done a good job of juggling two distinct storylines that you know are on a collision course. What he hasn't done is come u More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 01, 2007

liz rated it:

This book had no climax. I mean, I figured out what would probably happen... and then it did. And that was it. It mostly takes place in a city where everyone who's died, but can still be readily remembered by at least one living person, continues to exist. It also follows a three-person research expedition for the Coca Cola company to the Antarctic. A horribly deadly virus escapes into the world population... and whoops, I just gave away the ending.

He could not decide which poss More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Apr 17, 2007

Caleb rated it:

The book certainly has an intriguing premise. Brockheimer's idea of the afterlife is a strange metaphysical situation whereby people end up in a large city seemingly doing precisely what they had been doing in their previous lives. If this is purgatory, it certainly is a strange one. This is where the story begins to intertwine with the "real world" which is embodied by the story of a young woman on an Antarctic expedition.

The book was certainly captivating at the beginnin More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2008

Kev rated it:

This book brngs to mind a professor I had in college. He was a New York Jew with a withering wit. It was a graphic design class and he took no prisoners. He'd do a crit this way. One grade for the idea and another for the execution and he'd say thinges like this: "You had a great ideer here, A+ ideer, but LOUSY execution. I gotta give ya a D- for execution, so you getta C+."

Well, in the style of this prof, Kev: "GREAT execution, A+ execution; beautifully written. More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Nov 06, 2008

Ken-ichi rated it:

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0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 06, 2008

Daniel rated it:

One of the few comforts we can draw on when facing up to our own mortality is the fact that we will live on in the memories of those we leave behind. Kevin Brockmeier takes this sentiment and envisions a world in which it is literally true. As such, The Brief History of the Dead makes for a unique take on the idea of life and death, as well as a poignant testimony to the power of memory.

For the dearly departed, there is no heaven or hell in this world of Brockmeier's imagination. More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 18, 2008

Alb rated it:

I just finished this book and now I need to go to CuteOverload.com and stare at pictures of puppies before I wander drained of all hope into on-coming traffic. Phew somebody please buy Kevin Brockmeir a balloon bouquet or give him a hug because this guy needs cheering up. I mean don't get me wrong, I like lots of sad, bleak books and I actually think the fatalistic ending was logical and necessary but throw me an interesting charater or a meaningful, complicated relationship every couple of hund More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 11, 2008

Jamie rated it:

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 28, 2007

Judith rated it:

I wanted to give this three and a half stars, but apparently I can't. I really thought this was wonderful--my downrating of it is because I found that some of the Antarctica sequences began to drag a little. But the premise is so fantastic, and the characters of the dead so beautifully realised, that it deserves a high rating.

The premise of the novel--which is set sometime in the forseeable future--is that some kind of plague has struck the Earth, and people are dying by the millions More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 09, 2007

Robyn rated it:

Great book, with a controversial ending. The author opens with an African folktale about the varying levels of death. As long as someone is alive to remember you, you exist on a plane of neither living nor dead. And so we open into a city of the dead, where the afterlife is unexpectedly a lot like normal life. As the people who knew you die, your spirit fades away.

But in the city of the dead something dreadful begins to happen -- whole communities sweep in and sweep out, as More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2009

Sherrie rated it:

WOW! One of my favorites of 2006! What a fantastic book! The only way I can do this book justice is to first give you the Editor’s blurb: In a not-so-distant future, a deadly virus kills off every human on Earth, except for Laura Byrd, a wildlife specialist on an expedition to the South Pole. Readers quickly learn that the dead move on to another life in a fantastic city on another plane of existence; there, they live out a second life free from aging and disease until every person who knew t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 10, 2007

Dee rated it:

Kevin Brockmeier has two storylines that alternate between the chapters, yet these storylines are closely connected. One is about a world inhabited by those that have died but are remembered by those that are still living. When they are no longer remembered by the living, they disappear. The other storyline is about a woman working for the Coca-Cola company and working in Antarctica. Throughout the rest of the world everyone has died from a fast-spreading virus, which she has not been affect More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2008

Mark rated it:

A quirky little novel about limbo (not the dance), about Death (not the guy with the scythe), and about, I suppose, the end of the world (neither a bang nor a whimper). The city of the dead seems just like Pittsburgh, without sports (OK, it can't be Pittsburgh!) or aging. Everyone stays the same age--though apparently not the same condition (no gunshot wounds or signs of disease, etc.)--as when they died, and they remain in the city until the living people they know die, though this is a matt More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Ann M rated it:

There should be a particular damp shelf in book hell for science fiction books that start off with an interesting premise and then go absolutely NOWHERE. I mean, nowhere. I'm used to sci fi that starts off well, then is okay in the middle, then fizzles out. This one fizzled right away. I mean, who cares what the city of the still-remembered is like if nothing happens there? Who cares about all the dull crossing stories, and really, WHO CARES about the idiot street preacher as the last human More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Mar 16, 2009

Kelly rated it:

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 11, 2009

Megan rated it:

Every once in a while there comes a book that has such a great hook that you can't wait to read it. But often that hook is empty bait, without a satisfying plot to sink your teeth into. When I read the back of the new novel A Brief History of the Dead I was intrigued. What if after you die, you don't immediately go to heaven, but instead you go to the city. The city is where people find themselves after death. It seems like earth, but you never age. You simply stay there for 50 or 60 years, and More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 11, 2009

Emily rated it:

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Jan 02, 2009

Megan rated it:

The first chapter of this book was initially published in the New Yorker in spring of 2004, and was quite possibly the best short story I'd read in those pages (The New Yorker and I have somewhat different opinions on short stories, I think). I didn't write down the author's name or the story's title, so a few months later when I started combing my backissues to find the tale again, I was dismayed to discover I'd already trashed that copy.
Fast-forward two years, to the day Brief History of More...

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Dec 27, 2011

Franistart rated it:

I did like it, but I don't know. The premise is amazing. The whole idea is that dead people go to a different world so long as there's somebody in the living world that remembers them. So if everybody that remembers you die after you die, you disappear. I've never thought of anything like this, and the book does an amazing job of fleshing out the personalities of the dead.
The part that bothers me is, spoilers aside, there's a woman in Antarctica, and the book describes her.. journey, adven More...

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Dec 21, 2011

Matthew rated it:

Speechless... that's a good description of my state during my reading of Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead. Brockmeier gives us Coca-Cola as unintentional doom-bringer. The mega-corp manages to spring a lethal virus on humanity, killing off the entire planet in no time. Their attempts to spin the catastrophe bring a dark, cynical humor into the mix.

Brockmeier paints a very imaginitive picture of the city of the dead, a limbo-like place where souls go after death and st More...

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Sep 26, 2011

Ashok rated it:

Loved this book. It's about life after death, but not in the esoteric Shirley MacLaine kind of way. Everything is very real. There's a vast city not unlike NYC, which is apparently a kind of way station between states of being. The writing has a dreamlike quality which is sustained to the very end, and is heightened by the choice of real-world locations (before the characters die) that are equally alien and remote. The plot unfolds gently, in curls and squiggles rather than in twists and turns - More...

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Sep 16, 2011

Amy rated it:

I'm torn on this book. On the one hand, it was brilliant and beautiful, and gave me an entirely new way to think about death and life and the afterlife (no small feat). On the other hand, there could be no real climax to the story. There was only one way for it to end, and you could feel the author just sort of throwing up his hands and doing the inevitable with as much grace as he could muster.

And there are little, niggling things that bother me about the world he's created. Most not More...

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Aug 06, 2011

Acacia rated it:

(from my blog)

I've just finished Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead last night. It's based on an interesting premise that there is a city where the dead go after they die. There, they maintain an existence similar to that of the living with jobs, businesses and relationships. This lasts so long as there is someone living that remembers them. When there are no more people to remember them, they disappear from the city and no one knows where they've gone. The dead are reu More...

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Apr 09, 2011

Goldenwattle rated it:

This book started off so well. I turned the pages eagerly, but then I began to get bored with it. I know Laura’s memories of people were important to the story, but I found the constant memories of her past tiresome. And I found the city so American. Why was not the rest of the world represented in the city? Even the weather was North American. Life was supposed to continue in this afterlife, but for people from other cultures it would have not have been a continuance, but an alien world. Very p More...

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