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The Brief History of the Dead: A novel
by Kevin Brockmeier

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/755806.The_Brief_History_of_the_Dead_A_novel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Brief History of the Dead: A novel" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178075783m/755806.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/755806.The_Brief_History_of_the_Dead_A_novel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Brief History of the Dead: A novel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16967.Kevin_Brockmeier">Kevin Brockmeier</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/9851157?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars SPOILER ALERT WOOP WOOP SPOILER ALERT.
 
 When a person dies they are only as alive as the person remembering them, when the remembering party also snuffs it the person goes elsewhere. An interesting idea and well executed, but it leaves the question, where do the dead go when they are forgotten? To me what I took from this was a very cold and cynical view, that when no-one remembers you anymore you are gone. You are kept alive only in the mind of the person who knew you and when they themselves die you are gone, forever. Now a person may say that well there has to be something else after The City doesn’t there? I mean if the city is there then must there be something after. So by this supposition this must mean that all the people that the people in the city remember are also in another city and the people who are known to the people in the second city are kept alive in a third and then a fourth….. I don’t see that at all, maybe after The City there is a party city where all of the souls congregate and meet again. If this were so then what would be the purpose of the City at all? Why couldn’t these people go directly there? Was it a matter of overcrowding perhaps? And rules had to be established for a nice flow of Mega City travelers? I don’t see that either, the City is for some reason there and here is what I think in my softer side. 
 
 The City in itself is a form of telepathy; all people who are remembered are formed there with buildings, scenes and even animals that other people who are still alive remember. The city is formed by ALL living peoples memories and are all joined together through a mixture of everyone’s minds eye. When there is not enough imagination and in this case memory itself, then the world starts to disappear. The people are only held there because the living desire them to be there, in the living do not want to acknowledge that death is the end. So in short it is the power of people’s hope that created the city and when there was no-one left to hope there was no city anymore.
 
 Well this book was a quick read and a very decent one at that. It was a book that you knew how it would end from a quarter of the way through, but you didn’t quite know how it would get there. 
 It had its eerie moments and left you with questions to ponder. It must be said that the book was set in two parts with the even numbers being about the Antarctica scenario and the odd chapters being about the city of the dead. It pulled them both together at the end quite well but not well enough at the same time. I had the awful feeling that he needed to end it and did it in a very Stephen King way. 
 Still it must be said that the book was good enough to keep a person interested and not good enough to be memorable. 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/620183?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

James's review
rating:

bookshelves: horror
status: Read in December, 2007

SPOILER ALERT WOOP WOOP SPOILER ALERT.

When a person dies they are only as alive as the person remembering them, when the remembering party also snuffs it the person goes elsewhere. An interesting idea and well executed, but it leaves the question, where do the dead go when they are forgotten? To me what I took from this was a very cold and cynical view, that when no-one remembers you anymore you are gone. You are kept alive only in the mind of the person who knew you and when they themselves die you are gone, forever. Now a person may say that well there has to be something else after The City doesn’t there? I mean if the city is there then must there be something after. So by this supposition this must mean that all the people that the people in the city remember are also in another city and the people who are known to the people in the second city are kept alive in a third and then a fourth….. I don’t see that at all, maybe after The City there is a party city where all of...more SPOILER ALERT WOOP WOOP SPOILER ALERT.

When a person dies they are only as alive as the person remembering them, when the remembering party also snuffs it the person goes elsewhere. An interesting idea and well executed, but it leaves the question, where do the dead go when they are forgotten? To me what I took from this was a very cold and cynical view, that when no-one remembers you anymore you are gone. You are kept alive only in the mind of the person who knew you and when they themselves die you are gone, forever. Now a person may say that well there has to be something else after The City doesn’t there? I mean if the city is there then must there be something after. So by this supposition this must mean that all the people that the people in the city remember are also in another city and the people who are known to the people in the second city are kept alive in a third and then a fourth….. I don’t see that at all, maybe after The City there is a party city where all of the souls congregate and meet again. If this were so then what would be the purpose of the City at all? Why couldn’t these people go directly there? Was it a matter of overcrowding perhaps? And rules had to be established for a nice flow of Mega City travelers? I don’t see that either, the City is for some reason there and here is what I think in my softer side.

The City in itself is a form of telepathy; all people who are remembered are formed there with buildings, scenes and even animals that other people who are still alive remember. The city is formed by ALL living peoples memories and are all joined together through a mixture of everyone’s minds eye. When there is not enough imagination and in this case memory itself, then the world starts to disappear. The people are only held there because the living desire them to be there, in the living do not want to acknowledge that death is the end. So in short it is the power of people’s hope that created the city and when there was no-one left to hope there was no city anymore.

Well this book was a quick read and a very decent one at that. It was a book that you knew how it would end from a quarter of the way through, but you didn’t quite know how it would get there.
It had its eerie moments and left you with questions to ponder. It must be said that the book was set in two parts with the even numbers being about the Antarctica scenario and the odd chapters being about the city of the dead. It pulled them both together at the end quite well but not well enough at the same time. I had the awful feeling that he needed to end it and did it in a very Stephen King way.
Still it must be said that the book was good enough to keep a person interested and not good enough to be memorable.
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