THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD by Kevin Brockmeier

Reviewed by Melissa Fish

The entire compendium of world literature and philosophy is sprinkled with conjectures as to what happens to people when they die, a universal question that has transcended culture and time. Kevin Brockmeier, in his novel The Brief History of the Dead, provides his own unique answer to this question by drawing particularly on African traditions and creating a place called the City, populated by those who have died but are remembered by those still living. The City parallels our own world in every possible way; its inhabitants eat, sleep, work, and speculate on the uncertainty of what will happen when they leave the City for the next stage of death. In an intriguing narrative style that serves to emphasize this parallel, Brockmeier alternates chapters about the City with chapters that take place in the living world, telling the story of Laura Byrd, a woman trapped alone in Antarctica, and her struggles to survive and escape.

Brockmeier’s focus throughout the novel is less on action and more on the humanity behind the action. His chapters follow quite simple plotlines and act mostly as short character vignettes, about people in the City, about Laura, and about those she remembers. In a sense, Brockmeier seems to stress that our humanity derives from our interactions with others, both simple and complex. This notion emphasizes all the more the irony that Laura, though alive, is completely alone, whereas the characters in the City cling fervently to one another’s company and, in many cases, actually prefer the world of the dead to the world of the living strictly because of the companionship that they enjoy in this new world.

Though Brockmeier’s novel has somewhat of a doomsday ring to it – it is set temporally in the not-so-distant future, where global warming and bioterrorism are everyday realities – the novel cannot be categorized simply as science fiction or even as subtle socio-environmental commentary. Rather than dwelling on its futuristic realism, the novel explores at greater length the effect of the social and natural environment on the people in the narrative and their interactions. At its core, The Brief History of the Dead is, through its creation of a world where memory has a tangible effect and its presentation of that world in parallel with our own, less a story than a compelling exploration of the nature of human relationships and the depth of human remembrance.