Kevin Brockmeier

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten.

But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only show more newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out.

Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.

My Review: I am simply appalled that my cynical shell has been breached by a man who has an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and who has been published in McSweeney's, Crazyhorse, and suchlike Writerly Venues.

Appalled.

But then there's this:

Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.

That, laddies and gentlewomen, needed saying and needed Brockmeier to say it. It's just that true, and just that beautifully crafted.

I hate that.

I make merciless fun of, and throw lots of rotten eggs at, the Writerly Writers like Eggers and Franzen and Foster Wallace for their pretty sentences going nowhere new or even all that interesting. Their self-congratulatory cadres, nay myrmidons, attack anyone who dares say, "yeah, so?" of the myrmidons' ikons. Why can't Brockmeier have inspired such a slavish, culty following, so that I may point and say, "but him! He's a good one! He's a Writerly Writer with something *interesting* to say!"

Life is unfair.

But anyway. The story is a good one, of dislocation in time and space with all that implies for identity...how do we survive as ourselves even knowing that we aren't in any space ever known to us?...so we're already of to a pleasing start. The Writerly Writing is an enhancement of the basic story, because the sentences being self-consciously pretty and profound make a point about the afterlife. It's a well-used technique in this instance, and doesn't feel show-offy as normally it could or even would.

The ending. Well, now, all things have flaws. The important question is, is it a raku pottery crazing-type flaw, or an inclusion-in-the-diamond-type flaw? This will greatly depend on one's point of view of the afterlife. I'm on the fence with this book's ending...and I come down on the raku-pottery side only because I like the rest of the book so much. A different mood, and this would be a three-star review with a sad, impatient growl about the sentimentality of the ending.

Lucky Brockmeier. I had Thin Mints before I wrote this review. show less

This was brilliant. Genuinely amazing and moving. I'm always a fan of authors who manage to tell an engaging story without over-egging the pudding, so to speak, and Brockmeier does so well at this. Within a couple of pages I was there, there with the characters in this afterlife, there with Laura in the Antarctic. The "real life" parts of this book were like a far better realised version of The Martian, a book I dislike more the more I think about it. Brockmeier capture the "last woman on show more earth" stuff with such heartbreaking empathy, though I did think the last journey she goes on was a bit of a stupid decision on her part, but that's like a really minor concern. Guys, I just loved this and a I want to read a ton more Brockmeier right now. show less

A beautifully written, beautifully conceived little fairy tale. I almost wish it could have gone on forever, especially as I feel that the ending is the weakest part of the book.[return][return]Half of the novel is based on a gorgeous, appealing little wheeze. The afterlife (at least, the immediate afterlife) is neither Heaven nor Hell, but an ordinary City of day jobs and coffeeshops, minor inconveniences and random encounters, in which the Dead live as comfortably as they choose, as long show more as someone in the living world remembers them. Once the last living person who remembers them dies (and makes the transition to the City), they vanish, "softly and suddenly away" as Lewis Carroll would have said (and, indeed, "never be met with again.") No one knows where they go. [return][return]So, the City is a waiting room. It's a Purgatory, of sorts, but a very gentle and self-directed one. It's a place of choices, and --perhaps -- second chances: you can choose to be exactly the same obnoxious, work- and status-driven jerk you were in life. Or, you can choose to live the life you wished you'd been able to live when you were alive -- say, open up an greasy spoon diner, where you greet all of your customers by name, and serve up wonderful all-day breakfasts. If you enjoyed your life, you can carry on doing exactly what you used to do -- perhaps with the benefit of new friends, new lovers, or a new, revitalized relationship with someone you'd become stale with. All up to you. [return][return]As you have probably guessed, I unreservedly loved the half of the book set in the City. I loved the (seemingly) random focus on a different residents of the City in each chapter, stories that hinted at their connections to the world of the Living, hinted at the familiar yet slightly dystopian future of its backstory, and made some nicely timed revelations about the drama unfolding for the Living and the Dead. I loved the fact that Brockmeier kept the mechanics vague, and even a little illogical: there is money (there are a couple of beggars, and a crazy street preacher has some coins thrown at him by a woman who just wants him to leave her alone), but no sense that it's needed to get food at the diner, or paper for Luca Sims' homemade news sheet. And where does the food that's cooked and eaten, and the coffee that drunk in great quantities, and the paper come from? Dunno, don't really care. The City, for me, is a metaphor, in the very best sense, about love and the persistence of memory. Things that, you could argue, are pretty illogical themselves ... [return][return]My recollection, from my first reading of the novel about 10 years ago, was that I wasn't as blown away by the other half of the book -- the steadily unfolding drama of Laura Byrd, who is struggling to survive in Antarctica just as a particularly virulent virus is ripping across the globe. As I recalled, I understood Laura's story was necessary -- trying for no spoilers here (although I think you can guess what's what), but the deaths of so many people in the wider world, and Laura's dogged survival, has a great impact on the City -- provides what is, otherwise, just a nice wheeze with drama, mystery, something at stake.[return][return]So here's what's really interesting for me, on this rereading: reading it NOW (November 2020 -- hello from the Apocalypse, and Lockdown Hell, everyone ... :-), the chapters with Laura were, for the most part, brilliant. I don't know where Mr. Brockmeier got his crystal ball, but can I order one, please? Some of the offhand remarks about "the Blinks" (the terrible, highly contagious and almost instantly fatal disease) are painfully, well, funny, in a dark, black, bleak sort of way. From a diary entry, by one of Laura's companions ...[return][return]There's every single indication that the virus has taken a global toll. What's the word I'm looking for? Not an epidemic, but a --? Can't remember ...[return][return]Hmm, I think I can help you there (Later, down the page, he remembers. Pandemic. Yeah, I don't think we're going to forget that one for a while ...) And another one, from a teenager's blog the survivors discover, on an internet that it quietly folding in on itself, and vanishing (kind of like the City ...)[return][return]A few of us are still asymptomatic. We're holed up in the high school gym, away from everybody else. If it wasn't for the stupid quarantine, we'd be long gone by now ...[return][return]What breaks my heart -- and is SO DARN TRUE -- about that is how the high school jock throws around words like "asymptomatic" and "quarantine" as if they're the most natural things in the world. Brockmeier, in one line, captures how the virus even changes our vocabulary ... [return][return]Sadly, I am still not blown away by the final couple of chapter which IMHO, become too poetical, too airy-fairy. The real strengths of this fairy tale is how grounded it is, both in the ordinary, everyday world of the City, and in the snow and terrible loneliness of the Antarctic. BUT .. this is still a keeper, and highly recommended ... show less

I loved Kevin Brockmeier's novel, The Brief History of the Dead when I read it a couple of years ago. The writing was so descriptive that I felt cold when I read the descriptions of Antarctica. The storyline itself, about the afterlife, was fascinating and well-developed. I knew that I wanted to read more by Brockmeier.

For me, Things that Fall from the Sky, an earlier collection of Brockmeier's short stories, didn't quite match the elegance and depth of The Brief History of the Dead. show more However, Brockmeier's precisely descriptive writing continues to shine through. Consider these first two lines of "Apples":

"The fall of my thirteenth year was a time when all the important events in my life seemed to cluster together like bees. On the same sun-bright afternoon that I won the school spelling bee, my parents sat across from me in the living room and told me that they no longer loved each other, and a great gray ocean of wishlessness filled our house."

So much about the narrator is revealed in those two sentences. I would have read this collection for no other reason than to enjoy Brockmeier's writing.

But the storytelling itself is also top-notch in many of these stories. The storylines are unusual, creative, surprising. Brockmeier pulls in elements of fairy tales in some (like "A Day in the Life of Half of Rumpelstiltskin," a story whose whimsy is evident from just the title). In others, he describes situations that are utterly original. For example, "The Passenger" describes an entire society on an airplane. Each of the 11 stories is unique, demonstrating Brockmeier's range.

After reading The Brief History of the Dead, I was in awe of Brockmeier's writing. Things that Fall from the Sky shows that Brockmeier is as talented at writing short stories as he is at novels. show less