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Review title: Gorgeous Concept
Product review: I read the short story beginning of this book (I think it was the first chapter intact, actually) awhile ago in The New Yorker and have been waiting for the novel ever since. Brockmeier's city of the dead is a fascinating place, and the possibilies he touches on are, without exception, compelling and even plausible. Readers who are hoping for a fast-paced genre novel will likely be disappointed here. It dwells not on the futuristic elements of the story, nor on the apocalyptic ones (thoough both of these things are interesting elements) but on the nature of endurance, love, and why we want to stay alive - even if we're dead already. This book is more in line with a work like Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, or with some of the poems of W.S. Merwin, rather than with anything Asimov. The writing is gorgeous, and Brockmeier's meditation on death, and ultimately on the meaning of life and of the number of lives that we touch (even inadvertently) is moving.
