The Brief History of the Dead

"How many people was any one human being likely to remember? A thousand?...Ten Thousand? A hundred thousand? A million?"

This is the question posed by Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead. Brockmeier postulates an afterlife in stages, a sort of pleasant purgatory in which the departed live in "The City," going about their daily business: drinking coffee, going to work, reading the newspaper, dating, eating, and going to the movies. The only unusual thing about life in "The City" is that its inhabitants never age- they simply fade away at the death of the last person who remembers them in the world of the living.

Most residents adapt to life in "The City" pretty well. They set up shops, find roomates, and swap stories about their deaths. It is not unusual for new arrivals to find departed friends and family members. The reunited can have another chance to spend their lives together for forty or fifty years- or until there's no one left alive who remembers them.

But what happens when a pandemic strikes the world of the living? At first there's a surge of newcomers to "The City." Then, as fewer and fewer people are left alive to remember the dead, "The City" becomes a ghost town.

At this point we get down to the question of how many people one human being can remember- because that's exactly how many people are left alive: one.

The Brief History of the Dead follows the one surviving human on Earth as she struggles to eke out one more day of existence, then another. Her chapters alternate with the breathless wait of those in "The City" who depend on her survival for their very existence.

I can remember being asked to do a writing excercise, in which the first step was to write down every person I had ever met. It didn't matter if I could remember all their names: the smiling girl at the bagel shop, or the man with the earring who sells newspapers, was fine.

If you've ever compiled a list like this, as City resident Michael Puckett did, you might be not only surprised, but overwhelmed by the number of people who have intersected your life.

Michael Puckett went about making his list like I did: immediate and extended family, schoolmates, teachers, childhood friends, people you knew in high school and college, neighbors from every place you've lived. Co-workers. People you met in social and religious groups. Old girlfriends (boyfriends) and the people they knew. Friends of your children, people you met attending a wedding reception. Business contacts (like your insurance man, house contractor). Commercial contacts (that girl from the bagel store). As soon as Michael thinks his categories are complete, he remembers his Boy Scout troup, some guys from the gym, a woman he had seen at the library once "and for some reason had never forgotten." His dentist.

At the end of several days of trying to write down every single person he can remember, Michael did what I did: came across some family members he was very embarrassed not to have thought of right away, then tallied his list. Interested in Michael's census? He came up with the number forty-two thousand.

Whether this final total was inspired by the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, is subject to debate. But this staggering total is definitely the "answer" to this book.

What happens to us after we die? I don't know, and neither, I suspect, does Kevin Brockmeier. The deep chord struck in this book is not in speculating about the afterlife; it is the reflection of how we effect and are effected by the hundreds and thousands of other human beings passing through our lives. Memories of the people we've known haunt us- even when they're not dead.

Sit down and don't get up until you've filled three notebook pages with the names or descriptions of all the people you can remember. You'll see what I mean.