And Then, What? The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Kevin Brockmeier takes the aphorism that the dead live on in the memories of the living as premise and upon it builds a fascinating, disturbing, and intricately interwoven fantasy.

In alternating chapters, Brockmeier builds parallel universes. In one, set in our near future, population pressures and environmental degradation generate constant war and finally a viral pandemic. In the second, an alternate world called simply "the city," people who have died in the "real" world find themselves in a metropolis without discernible boundaries populated by the dead, many of whom have resided there for decades. There they find old friends or form new relationships, find work, dine in restaurants, read, play, and talk endlessly over coffee and pastries. New people of all ages arrive, speaking of varied "crossings" from the living world, and people eventually disappear unobserved, leaving no physical trace.

In the world of the living, zoologist Laura Byrd is dispatched to a public relations-driven expedition to the Antarctic, purportedly to research the use of pure glacial water for the Coca Cola Company. Assigned to work with two male scientists in a remote facility, the three lose radio and Internet contact with the outside world, and when re-supply helicopters fail to appear, the two men take their power sledge to try to return to the expedition's base camp on the coast. When, after weeks alone, her power system fails, Laura, too, sets out across the icy waste to try to find the coastal station, only to discover when she arrives that everyone there has died. From a printout of a newspaper front page and a personal journal she finds there, she learns that billions of people around the globe have already died of an unknown and invariably fatal virus. Laura's mind gradually accepts the possibility that she may be the only human left alive, but she feels driven to try to reach a remote radio transmitter station to attempt to establish communication with others.

Back in "the city" newspaperman Luka Sims realizes that unusual numbers of people there are disappearing daily while strangely, many thousands more are arriving, all telling of vast numbers of deaths from a fast-moving mystery virus which has swept the Earth. Most of these remain only for a day or two and then are gone, but Luka and his girlfriend Minny slowly realize that the dwindling number who remain, like themselves, are those who have some memory of a woman named Laura Byrd. Sims is a journalism professor with whom Laura had a freshman romance; Minny is her childhood best friend; and Laura's mother and father, who had drifted apart in the later years of their marriage, have rediscovered a deep love in "the city." Compelled by his old vocation's drive for the "facts," Luca continues to write for the remaining population, becoming firmly convinced that this remnant's existence depends on Laura's continued survival.

After several nearly fatal mishaps, however, Laura finds only wreckage when she reaches the transmitter outpost, and as her strength wanes, her mind wanders between memories from her past and the surrealistic landscape of dry snow and weak sun before her. As a delirium takes over her failing thoughts and her consciousness wanes, the alternate world of "the city" begins to shrink also. Whole districts and parks beyond roadways become a void, and even parts of buildings cease to have existence. Luka, Minny, and the remaining people find themselves in an ever-constricted vortex of tenuous being, held together only by their relationship with each other and a failing link to the old world.

Despite the bleak nihilism which his plot requires, The Brief History of the Dead is a compelling read, with flashes of hauntingly beautiful writing bathed in the slippery sheen of memory. He describes the memories of former lives as breaking through to the residents of "the city," "like a fish smacking its tail on the surface of a lake." Of the "real" living, he has Luka remark that "the living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only as long as they remember us."

Although most praise the audacity of his premise and the quality of his writing, some critics have found disappointment in Brockmeier's pessimistic ending. The book does, however, have a redeeming theme, that our connectedness to others is where we all truly live and ultimately the only reality we know. He closes with these words:

They would listen to each other's voices, and they would breathe each other's breath. And they would wait for that power that would pull them like a chain into whatever came next, into that distant world where broken souls are wrenched out of their histories.