read: the brief history of the dead
Lyrical and slight, The Brief History of the Dead combines a magic-realist meditation on the afterlife with intriguing hints of science fiction, but the story ultimately flounders in the wake of author Kevin Brockmeier's endless similes and metaphors. Lovely as the imagery is, the omnipresence of the word "like" begins to whine like tinnitus. The penultimate chapter is so choked with purple, belabored visuals that it's practically one unicorn and a rainbow away from reading like a precocious teenage girl's diary. And the conclusion is an abrupt copout, period.