How the Dead Live (Magill’s Literary Annual 2001)
At a glance:
- Author: Will Self
- First Published: 2000
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1988-2001
- Setting: London
- Principal Characters: Lily Bloom, David, Charlotte, Natasha, Phar Lap Jones
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Twentieth century, 1980’s, Jews or Jewish life, Death or dying, London, 1990’s, Diseases, England
- Locales: London, England
Will Self’s third novel and tenth book overall—there are also three collections of short stories, two novellas, and two essays—expands a premise introduced in the opening story of an earlier book, The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1995). “The North London Book of the Dead” is not only one of Self’s best and most representative fictions but also, for all its deadpan grotesquerie, one of his most autobiographical insofar as it deals with the death of Self’s mother in 1988. The story begins with the son (also the story’s narrator) arranging his eccentric and...
[The entire page is 2307 words long]
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