Dia de los Muertos

Here are three titles in honor of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), also referred to All Souls Day. This is a day, in Mexican culture and also in many religious traditions, to celebrate the lives of loved ones who have died and to pray for and honor them. These books do a little of both. Death figures predominantly in all of them and, therefore, there is a sense of sadness underlying each one, but they also reveal great beauty, love, and a celebration of life. These books offer readers what is best about fiction: the imaginative journey through all of life's possibilities.

We're in Trouble by Christopher Coake


I have found it difficult to describe this book of short stories in the past because while the characters in each of them somehow must deal with the idea of death, either through personal loss or vicariously through someone else, the stories rise well above being simply depressing tales of the hardest part of human life. They are worth reading, thinking about, and even cherishing, but I think the following quotation about the book does it more justice than I can:

"Each of the seven stories in this extraordinary debut collection shows love staring at the face of death--an encounter that elicits either the best or the worst in these unforgettable characters....With the complexity, depth, and narrative drive of a novel, these stories show love darkening and persevering as it is tried by the cold fact of death....Christopher Coake makes us feel the truth of his characters' lives and transforms it into cathartic art." Book Jacket

Love is at the heart of these stories, and this is what makes them compelling rather than sensational, thoughtful rather than depressing.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier


This novel can be classified as science fiction, because it takes place in the future, but not necessarily one very far removed from our present. The world as we know it is still recognizable, and other than enhanced technology has not changed all that much. Two stories run parallel to each other in the novel. One is the story of The City, which is the place where those who have died live and work and exist in a rather normal way until the last people who remember them in the land of the living "cross over" to The City themselves. In alternating chapters, we follow the story of Laura Byrd, who is trapped alone in a scientific research station on Antarctica. The connection between the two plot lines becomes clear to the reader relatively early in the novel, though the characters do not see it until closer to the end.

Barbara Hoffert of Library Journal offers a nice, short description of The Brief History of the Dead:

"Inhabitants of the City eat at Jim's sandwich shop and read Luka Sims's mimeographed News & Speculation Sheet--never mind that they are all deceased. They've made the crossing--each person's [sic] is uniquely beautiful--and they don't know what happens next. People do disappear, and it is surmised that you remain in the City as long as you remain in the memory of someone left behind. Hence the concern when people start vanishing in droves....Beautifully written and brilliantly realized, this imaginative work from [Kevin Brockmeier] delivers a startling sense of what it really means to be alive. Highly recommended."

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak


The Book Thief is ultimately the tale of Leisel Nenninger, a foster-child of a German couple who live in a small town during height of World War II. Leisel is the book thief of the title. She and her family, like many Germans during that time, are caught up in the politics of war and find themselves performing acts of heroism of which they never, ever would have thought themselves capable.

What makes Leisel's story unusual, however, is the narrator of the novel, who is Death himself. But in Zusak's hands, Death is not a monster or vengeful or necessarily frightening. Death is a being who, as he tells us, is
"in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about th[e] whole topic [of death], though most people find themselves hindered in believing me...Please trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful....Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me."


The reason Death is even telling us the story of Leisel--one of the millions of stories of the Holocaust that could be told--is that every so often he is profoundly struck by one of the many lives he has seen, and he cannot forget it. He says of Leisel, "Yes, often, I am reminded of her, and in one of my vast array of pockets, I have kept her story to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt--an immense leap of an attempt--to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it."

In his review of the novel, Philip Ardagh of the Guardian praises Zusak for this choice because "[i]t gives a unique and compassionate voice to a narrator who can comment on human's inhumanity to human without being ponderous, 'worthy' or even quite understanding us at times." I was so happy to read this description because though I very much loved this novel, it has always been very difficult to describe to other people how a novel narrated by Death could be at all worth reading. Or how I could see this narrator as at all sympathetic.

Death has a dilemma, and it's not one that is so far removed from questions we sometimes ask ourselves. Death wants to understand us: "I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race--that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant." By telling us the wonderous story of the book thief, Death is trying to make sense of it. How can the story of this one little girl offer proof that we, that humans, are worth it? Leisel has a great deal to offer us as we try to answer this question.
Ardagh has the highest praise for this novel:

A number one New York Times bestseller, The Book Thief has been marketed as an older children's book in some countries and as an adult novel in others. It could and - dare I say? - should certainly be read by both. Unsettling, thought-provoking, life-affirming, triumphant and tragic, this is a novel of breathtaking scope, masterfully told. It is an important piece of work, but also a wonderful page-turner. I cannot recommend it highly enough.


In one of my other posts, I said that one of my criteria for a Great Book is that it leaves me thinking about it long after I have turned its last page and that it is a book to which I can return, flip through at random, and find something beautiful on any page. The Brief History of the Dead and The Book Thief are two novels that, for me anyway, fit that definition of Great Books.