The Brief History of the Dead

As mentioned previously, I'm not a fan of narrarating-from-the-dead stories. An author really has to be on their chops to get me to read and enjoy a novel with dead people as characters. David Long did it with The Inhabited World. Kevin Brockmeier just missed with The Brief History of the Dead.
It's an intriguing idea that drives the novel: dead people “live” on in a city of the dead as long as they are remembered by someone on Earth. When the last memory dies, so do they, disappearing from the city of the dead. Unfortunately, the author doesn't have much to say beyond that concept. The dead are much like the living...except they're dead. And when everyone on Earth starts kicking the proverbial bucket and the city of the dead begins emptying out, he has little to say about what that - and being alive - means.