MADreads

Persistence pays off

February 27th, 2007 Jane J. - Central Library

Have you ever started a book and been convinced it wasn’t going to be for you?  You’ve only read a couple pages and you’re just sure it’s going to be a slog?  But you keep reading because you want to give it a fair shake or you try to adhere to the rule of 50 or you are incapable of not finishing a book?  Maybe you’re like me and you have a book group in 24 hours and the book has to be read? 

If any of these fits, you’ve probably also experienced the thrill of realizing that the book is thought-provoking and wonderful.  And you wonder why you ever thought you wouldn’t like it. 

Case in point: The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier.  Brockmeier’s book opens in The City.  The City is an ever changing metropolis of the recently dead.  No one in the city knows for sure why they’re there or why they eventually leave but the most popular theory is that they remain there as long as a living person still has them in their memories.  When the last person who knew them dies, they move on from the City.

I’ll admit I was thrown by chapter one - though I had a general idea of what was coming.  But that book group discussion was looming and I kept reading.  I’m so glad I did.  Chapter two takes us back to the world of the living and into the life of Laura Byrd.  Laura is living on a research station on Antarctica and has lost all contact with the outside world - a world that may have disappeared in the wake of a devastating pandemic.  As Laura struggles, we get to know the people in her memories and see them with their own struggles in the City.

This is one of those books I’ll be thinking about long after tonight’s discussion.  Who are the people who inhabit your memories?

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction