This had some good intrigue, interesting ideas, but it meandered so much I had trouble staying invested. ( )

Beautiful book about memory and how it connects people, even after death. Brockmeier does an amazing job weaving together two initially very different stories--one set in the "first stage" of the afterlife, and one in the arctic. The end result is haunting and very moving. (Fantastic end and last line, too.) Bravo. ( )

Enjoyed this one quite a lot and I'm looking forward to reading more Brockmeier.

I thought the concept was fantastic and I found it to be a page turner even though I can't say a whole lot actually happens in book.

Wasn't thrilled with the ending because it got so muddled but I think that was intentional. ( )

Interesting. Like all time warping, or afterlife thought experiments, it doesn’t work if you try to think it out, but it is an interesting tale of the end of people after a pandemic. Unsure why the protagonist has to journey out of Antarctica. That seemed a bit much. But I guess she has to die to bring about the end of the in between life and death place where everyone (only people) went while they were still remembered by the living. Ultimately unconvincing.

Horrible
. Read 105 pages and had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. I'd didn't care at all about any of the characters in the book. No idea why this book got such a high rating? ( )

More of a thought-experiment than a novel, without much of a narrative journey to it. As a short book, it's probably interesting enough to spend a little time on. ( )

More of a thought-experiment than a novel, without much of a narrative journey to it. As a short book, it's probably interesting enough to spend a little time on. ( )

It's been a while, but I remember liking the idea and the writing style of this one, but I don't recall any grand feelings of love, so I'm doing 3 stars. I read it after hearing Nancy Pearl rave about it on NPR. ( )

Worth taking the time to read. Very different than most end of the world type books. Like how he approached it. ( )

I really enjoyed this book until Laura Byrd starts realizing she's the only person left and all the people in the "after" start disappearing, then it all gets a little too predictable. Like many said, it's an amazing short story that just went on way too long. ( )

A different, non-religious telling of purgatory. In Brockmeier's death sequence, when people died they went to a big city to live (in another dimension?). They lived until there was nobody else to remember them, then they passed into the next dimension, which was where Brockmeier's book ended. This was one of the oddest books I've read, neither odd good or odd bad! I had this both on Audible and Kindle. 272 pages ( )

I seem to be having an AMAZING reading month. I can't remember the last time I read so many 4 star stories in a short time frame (we'll give 'Consider Phlebas' a pass, and roll it into the Culture books overall). Partly this is, I think, because I've taken the pressure off myself to stick to "recent" releases and just concentrated on hunting down fiction that I think I'll love.

Anyways... this was phenomenal. The kind of book that sets my brain alight, that delights in and plays with language; that contains enormous scope and far-reaching themes, yet very personal stories; that examines the universe through tiny, refractive lenses. The imagery and skillful writing were a joy. I think this will stay with me for quite awhile.

Fans of weird fiction, new weird, surrealism, and/or litfic with a speculative edge, should pick up this novel if they haven't already.

TLDR: Look, it was just fucking great. Fin. ( )

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.

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 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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...)

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 ...

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 ...

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 ... ( )

Kevin Brockmeier takes an overdone cliche - the end of the world - and tells a moving and personal tale that makes the cliche new and exciting again. ( )

This is an amazing book---one of the best I have read so far in the twenty-first century. Based on the premise of a dual afterlife: Upon dying, people go to a sort of limbo and remain there for as long as at least one person still living remembers them. When no one left alive remembers you, then you move on to the true hereafter. This book takes place in the near future and follows Laura Byrd, an antarctic research for the Coca-Cola Corporation, and her deceased parents in the afterlife. ( )

When someone dies, there is a place – a city – they go until the last person who remembers them dies. Then they disappear from the city. In alternating chapters, this book is in that place, alternating with Laura, who is stuck in Antarctica. She is by herself, as the two others she was there doing research with went for help when they could no longer radio home. But, they didn’t come back, either. What Laura doesn’t know is that an epidemic has hit the rest of the world.

I was ready to rate this 3.5 stars (good), but I dropped it right at the end. I mostly preferred following Laura’s story in Antarctica to the chapters following the various people in the “dead” city. But, the last chapter following Laura was just... weird, I thought. ( )

It's been awhile since I read this, and pieces of it still stick with me. An amazing, haunting story. ( )

I’m so glad I read this right in the middle of a record-breaking [b:heat wave|3850|Heat Wave A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Illinois)|Eric Klinenberg|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165365402s/3850.jpg|7582]. The future – global warming, war and, ultimately pandemic, have wiped out every person from the planet except Laura Byrd. Laura escapes the pandemic while on a futile Antarctic expedition sponsored by Coca-Cola to study the remaining wildlife of the continent. As the inhabitants of the earth disappear, the City of the Dead grows more and more populated until it too experiences a mass exodus. The dead only remain in the city while someone on earth still carries them in their memory. ( )

This is a tough one to listen to - at night - in the winter. For a post-apocalyptic novel, this has to be one of the most depressing ones I've encountered, picking over the memories of the dead and the living in detail, along with Laura's excruciating Antarctic journey. I managed to stick with it, for the quality of the storytelling, but I nearly gave up a few times, and never have I so rooted for a protagonist to die. ( )

Thought-provoking.
What would have really happened if someone had decided to commit mass murder through the Coca-Cola company?

Possible? I don't believe it.

In any case, the book is written interestingly, yet a little self-evident towards the end. ( )

One of my all-time favorite books (definitely in the top 10). ( )

Two story lines intersect: Laura, trapped alone in Antartica struggling to survive and the story of the world of the dead who continue on in a new life there as long as they are remembered by the living. Excellent story, well told. ( )

Different than I expected, different than anything I've ever read (which at this point is quite an achievement). Very imaginative setting. The writing is lovely. Very thoughtful about interconnections between people. ( )

When they die, the dead cross over into the City, live there for what may be days and may be decades and then vanish. One speculation is that they only stay for as long as there is somebody alive who remembers them.

This book started off beautifully, magically, but after the first few chapters it left me with so many questions about life in the City. I felt the penultimate chapter could have been trimmed back a bit. ( )

This started with such promise: I loved the premise and the first few chapters. The episodes in the real world, where the Antarctic researcher lives on in a nearly empty world, didn't work as well for me, I found the purgatory where the dead remain until the last living person who remembers them dies far more fascinating. And, as the book wore on and Laura, the living scientist, kept marching on I just lost interest in her march towards some other outpost on the bottom of the world, and the purgatory scenes just felt more like a waiting room for the next scene with Laura. ( )