How the Dead Live

Will Self

Penguin, £6.99
ISBN 0 140 26865 0
Rating: ****

What exactly happens to us when we die? Do we rot away into oblivion; swagger up to Heaven or skid in to the burning belly of Hell; get reincarnated; or roam aimlessly around shopping malls looking for a bargain? This is one of the questions posed by Will Self in his new novel. Death and dying hardly seem like the topics of a bestseller, but welcome to “Will's World.” It is only he who can take a subject of such gravity and amuse us with his unique intellectual flair.

This award winning journalist brings you into the bizarre realms of pop singing, boogying, calcified fetuses, and monsters made from the fat lost by dieters during their life time.

How the Dead Live is an account of Lilly Bloom's life, death, and afterlife. In life she is a vicious old cow, hating just about everything from combat trousers to Steven Spielberg. In death she is released from the two principal sources of her bitterness—her cancer and her junkie daughter. Will Ms Bloom fair any better in the afterlife?

The most striking feature of this book is the talent in making the extraordinary nature of death ordinary. But then again death is a very ordinary thing—an everyday occurrence—a universal truth. For most of our lives we either become absentminded regarding our own mortality, or we delude ourselves by thinking that we are destined for a higher place—free of the anguish of everyday existence in the comforting arms of a superior being. Will Self's satire subtly challenges our beliefs as to what exists after we die. It is a brave choice having the main character as intensely dislikeable. However, Self's talent lies in his ability to enable us to empathise with him.

The most disturbing device adopted by Self is his chronicle of recent mass death: the Soho bombing, aeroplane crashes, and a myriad of newsworthy deaths by numbers are immensely hard hitting. This new edition will not fail Will Self fans. It is challenging, original, warped yet ultimately warm.

Debashis Singh, preregistration house officer, Leicester
Email: debsingh@hotmail.net


studentBMJ 2001;09:357-398 October ISSN 0966-6494