The Brief History of the Dead
فرمت کتاب
audiobook
تاریخ انتشار
2006
نویسنده
Richard Poeناشر
Recorded Books, Inc.شابک
9781440799464
کتاب های مرتبط
- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
- دیدگاه کاربران
نقد و بررسی
There are two worlds in this imaginative story. Narrator Richard Poe expertly portrays this action-adventure with a message, in which a viral infection threatens the world's population. Heroine Laura Byrd, caught in the blistering cold of Antarctica during a research mission, may be the only person who survives the pandemic. Her struggle against insurmountable odds is both pulse-pounding and heart-breaking. Most interesting is the world of the afterlife, where inhabitants live as long as they are remembered by someone here on Earth. The lyric description as rendered by Poe makes this a book more enjoyable to listen to than to read. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
Starred review from December 19, 2005
A deadly virus has spread rapidly across Earth, effectively cutting off wildlife specialist Laura Byrd at her crippled Antarctica research station from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the planet's dead populate "the city," located on a surreal Earth-like alternate plane, but their afterlives depend on the memories of the living, such as Laura, back on home turf. Forced to cross the frozen tundra, Laura free-associates to keep herself alert; her random memories work to sustain a plethora of people in the city, including her best friend from childhood, a blind man she'd met in the street, her former journalism professor and her parents. Brockmeier (The Truth About Celia
) follows all of them with sympathy, from their initial, bewildered arrival in the city to their attempts to construct new lives. He meditates throughout on memory's power and resilience, and gives vivid shape to the city, a place where a giraffe's spots might detach and hover about a street conversation among denizens. He simultaneously keeps the stakes of Laura's struggle high: as she fights for survival, her parents find a second chance for love—but only if Laura can keep them afloat. Other subplots are equally convincing and reflect on relationships in a beautiful, delicate manner; the book seems to say that, in a way, the virus has already arrived.
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