The Brief History of the Dead

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Category: Speculative fiction Grade: A+

This is the kind of book that you read for. It's not for everybody since its a little strange, but, for me, it's, by far, the best book of the summer so far. It's what I tend to call a "concept" book - one that takes a strange concept and carries it to its logical conclusions. In this case, the concept comes from African societies and is called "sasha". These societies divide humans into three categories - the living, the wholly dead (zamani) and those living in sasha - those that some living human still remembers directly.

Brockmeier tells a duel story, bouncing back and forth between the still living and the sasha. He introduces a second major plot device that lets him sharply focus the consequences of the existence of the sasha. This review is extremely hard to write because I'd really like to spill the beans here and tell you what happens but watching the story slowly develop is what makes this book so good. So, even though, it'll dramatically shorten the review, I'm going to be a good guy and not say any more about the book's plot.

This reasonably short book is just beautifully written. It is, at times, funny, surprising, sad, depressing and even a little scary. It also has probably the best death scene I've ever read anywhere. The book just grabs you and doesn't let go. I happened to be standing up when I started reading the last 20 or 30 pages and ended up reading the rest of the book standing in that one spot and then being stunningly disappointed that it was over.