The Brief History of the Dead

by Kevin Brockmeier, Pantheon Books, 252 pages

I first encountered "Brief History" as an O. Henry Prize winning short story (in 2005). It was a mesmerizing piece, elegent and eerie and easily the best in the collection. Both the short story and the novel use the same premise as a starting point, namely the belief of several African societies concerning the dead. Simply put, this belief states that the dead exist in a ghostly state of limbo only so long as there are people who remember them. Only when they are forgotten do they pass into the great beyond.


As seen by Kevin Brockmeier, this state of limbo is an enormous city in which the dead continue to hold down jobs and fall in love. Both the short story and the novel revolve around the same moment of crisis: the city of the dead has begun to disappear en masse. For so many people to be forgotten at once can only mean one thing: something devastating has happened in the world they have left behind.

In the short story, we are never quite told exactly what has happened, allowing for any number of interpretations. But in the novel, it soon becomes clear that humanity has fallen victim to a manmade plague. Running parallel to the history of the dead is that of Laura, who may or may not be the last person on Earth. When she discovers this, she's at a secluded outpost in Antarctica and much of the novel involves her desperate trek across the South Pole.

Antarctica is depicted in stark and vivid prose and it is these chapters in which Brockmeier's narrative is the strongest: there is natural tension in the story of a lone woman, struggling across a hostile environment towards something that may or may not be her salvation. Brockmeier eventually ties his two narrative threads together - the history of the dead turns out to be that of Laura herself - but for me these chapters paled in comparison to the drama of Laura's ordeal.

Still, the prose is elegant and Brockmeier slowly builds a narrative maze, each chapter building perfectly on the last. Much like Aimee Bender, another modern day wunderkind, Brockmeier's great talents lie in tunneling through a fantastic premise and finding the kernel of truth at its heart. Although the story is tragic, the novel's themes are not: Brockmeier has written a piece that explores the ways in which we are all connected so that even a woman alone in the South Pole can still have a grave impact on the world.

As a side note, it was amusing to read this novel so soon after reading "The Coke Machine" for in Brockmeier's world, it is Coca-Cola who is inadvertently responsible for bringing about the end of humanity.