The Brief History of the Dead, by Kevin Brockmeier, Pantheon, 256 pages, $22.95.
If you want to start a debate among just about any group of people, ask the following question: What happens to us when we die?
It's an interesting topic, because so much time and energy is spent on contemplating and arguing about the answer, yet no one will ever know the truth until it is too late to share (or, as the narrator of Marilynne Robinson's beautiful Gilead put it: "I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.")
Kevin Brockmeier of Little Rock takes on this topic in his new novel, The Brief History of the Dead. It is his second novel after the disturbing The Truth About Celia. He has also published a short story collection and two children's novels. In this new book, he imagines a world where nearly everyone has been killed by a dreaded disease and a city where the dead go soon after they die.
THE CITY
It is said that the dead live on in the memories of those whose lives they touched. Brockmeier takes this idea literally by giving the dead a city, a kind of anteroom to the great beyond where things are much the same as they were on earth.
People have jobs, eat at restaurants, go for long walks through the everchanging city and often spend time with those people they knew when they were alive. There's even a newspaper, the L. Sims News & Speculation Sheet, which reports on what's happening on earth from those who have recently crossed over.
It used to be that it took decades for people to disappear from the city. The theory was that people stayed in the city until all those who knew them in life died. Then they moved on to the next stage (even in this world, no one really knows what happens, because no one knows what if anything comes after the city).
But as the book opens, the city is filling up quickly, and emptying almost as fast. An epidemic that kills everyone who catches it within 24 hours or so is sweeping the earth. People begin to appear in the city and disappear within a few hours or days instead of a few decades.
"The entire population of a small Pacific island appeared in the city on a bright windy afternoon, congregated on the top level of a parking garage, and were gone by the end of the day," Brockmeier writes.
Even those who have been in the city for years begin to disappear. No one knows what is happening or why, or if anyone will be left in the city when "the great leave-taking," as the newspaper calls it, ends.
Meanwhile, Laura Byrd, a "wildlife specialist" employed by the Coca-Cola Corporation, is stranded in Antarctica, alone with dwindling supplies and failing equipment. The company sent a team of three on "either a publicity exercise or a research expedition, depending on where you read about it: an internal document or a news release."
The polar ice caps are melting so quickly that Coke wants to cash in on the water before it disappears by using it in its production. This is clearly a different world from the one in which we live.
There are wars everywhere, beacons warn people of terrorist threats and bizarre marketing tactics such as white powder in mailings after an anthrax scare and "ambient graffiti" are used to get people to buy Coke.
The expedition has been sent to investigate whether it's viable for Coke (which owns Antarctica along with Bertelsmann and FCI) to collect the ice, but the expedition has lost its radio antenna.
The two other members of the expedition set off to use the radio of the last research facility on the continent, used to study penguins. Laura has been alone for days and is sure she's going to die if she stays put.
Readers follow her across the ice as she remembers all the people she has known in life. Little does she know that she may be the last person alive on earth, and all those she remembers are the last inhabitants of the city.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
While this book has a lot to say about the nature of life and death, the true theme of Brockmeier's lovely book is the connections between people. His observations about solitude, how relationships can change even after years and the powerful pull of life are touching and true.
Laura's parents find themselves falling in love again in the city, as her mother discovers that solitude can be had even with another person.
"Phillip was part of her solitude, just as he had been so long ago, when they were first getting to know each other," Brockmeier writes. "They could wait for the world to change together. Both of them were aware of the transformation, and both of them were secretly gratified by it, though modestly and never out loud, for fear that it would go away."
At the same time, Laura is going through her own transformation. Though she knows it's unlikely she'll ever see another living person, if anyone else on earth is still alive, she is unwilling to give up. She won't let herself die, even though it would be much easier to do so.
"She imagined death as a wonderful melting," Brockmeier writes. "The cold would pass out of her blood. She would be so much warmer. No one would ever find her or know what had happened to her, no one would ever see her again, and what difference would it make? The world was over anyway. She would never meet another living soul.
"But in the end, she knew, she couldn't let herself do it, couldn't let herself fall. She had to keep struggling, for the same reason that everyone else kept struggling, or at least they always had in the past. She felt that to let go of the rope would be cheating."
This book, which started as a short story of the same name published in The New Yorker (which won Brockmeier an O. Henry Prize), is a rich and deeply detailed story of suffering, death and the things that come after.
It is eerie and beautiful, full of the random tales and memories of the dead (and the living, as well), things they didn't even know they remembered until they had nothing else to think about. It is these details that make this story heartwarming and unforgettable, because it is these small stories, these little minor memories, that shape our lives and the memories of those we leave behind.
Sarah E. White is a freelance writer living in Fayetteville.