The Brief History of the Dead – Kevin Brockmeier

How many people do you have in your head? Think about it now. Think family. Think friends. Think work colleagues. Think about those you were in school with and your teachers. Think all those who sit round you in church or in the coffee house or bar.

Now think of any shop assistant who served you. Think of all those who have brushed passed you in the aisle of every flight you’ve ever been on while you put your carry-on in the overhead locker. Or the couple who silently shared the adjoining table in the restaurant. Everyone. Absolutely everyone you’ve ever made a conscious human connection with throughout your life.

Now imagine that after death there is an intermediate place where the dead reside so long as there is someone alive who retains a memory of them.

How many people would be ‘alive’ because of you?

This is the premise of an interesting little novel by Kevin Brockmeier called ‘The Brief History of the Dead’. The chapters alternate between a place called the City where the dead ‘survive’ while there is a living memory of them, and the living world which is being ravaged by a deadly manufactured virus released into the earth through Coca-Cola! People are rapidly disappearing from the City as people die, until all those who remain realise they all share a connection with Laura Byrd, the last survivor who is struggling to exist in her remote research station on Antartica.

The book is a fascinating reflection on the enduring power of memory. Brockmeier’s imaginative descriptions of the City are wonderful, but the story of the dramatic journey in Antartica tends to drag. And the ending is anticlimactic. But the premise has stayed with me.

It got me thinking about who would be there because of me.

Peter Wilson (aka Duke Special) would be there. Three days in a row last year I arrived in my car at the same junction at the same time in East Belfast. Peter was waiting to emerge into the traffic so I waved him in. On the third day he raised a hand in greeting.

A young woman on a tram in Munich in 2005. I stood on the kerb while the tram came round the corner from my right. She was sitting two thirds of the way back as she brushed a fugitive lock of auburn hair from her face. Our eyes locked for a micro-second.

A woman cyclist riding a road bike for only the third time in her life trying to climb the Col du Glandon in 2006. I was stopped and resting in the only smidgen of shadow on a long stretch of road. She stopped in the hot sun 100 metres down from me and I invited her to share the shade. And the 53 year old Aussie on the same mountain. We rode together to the top and shared stories and laughs in between dropping and being dropped by a dutch rider.

So how many people do you have in your head? And who are they?