A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

This was a very unusual book.

Half of the story takes place in "The City," a limbo-esque location where people go when they die. In the book, they live there until there is nobody left alive who remembers them, at which point they actually go to a more final resting place. The author based this concept on a belief in certain African societies that such a place exists. The other half of the story is about a woman trapped in a research post in Antarctica who trying to figure out how to communicate with the outside world since her satellites are damaged and power sources are quickly draining. Brockmeier skillfully weaves these two stories together in an incredible way.

This was not one of those books with two stories where one of them was more interesting to the other and I thus spent half the book trying to get to the good parts. Both stories were compelling and I wanted to know what would happen.

One thing I loved about Brockmeier's writing was his use of small anecdotes throughout the book to quickly get the reader more background on a particular character or environment. I have not seen this technique used as successfully as this in anything I can remember.

I ought to put his first novel on my reading list.