How the Dead Live

In 1988, sixty-five-year old Lily Bloom quickly succumbs to cancer in London. But after life there's death. Guided by an Aborigine named Phar Lap Jones, Lily is transported by a Greek Cypriot minicab driver to the North London dead neighbourhood of Dulston. There, accompanied by her lithopedion Lithy and her dead son Rude Boy, she's introduced to the twelve-step Personally Dead meetings, and watches over her living daughters--the cold, ambitious Charlotte, and her favourite, the heroin-addicted Natasha.

Since Self's face, voice and, notoriously, his life story are familiar to millions who will never pick up his book, there's always the risk of over-reading his work biographically. Read this way, Lily is clearly based on his New York-born Jewish mother; large chunks of Self's much-publicised addictions are wittily retooled; and Self himself is sexily transmuted into the beautiful and glamorously doomed Natasha. But Lily is a feisty, articulate woman, with a complex history spanning two continents, two husbands, and a constantly recreated personality--a great literary creation. Self's longterm obsession with London provides us with the utterly convincing Dulston; his treatment of modern Jewish life in North London (versus New York) will find its fans and critics; and his sympathetic account of Lily's decline into her morphine-laden deathbed is deeply affecting. But ultimately How The Dead Live grows beyond such local concerns. Ultimately, this novel is about the vexed relationship between the local worries of contemporary Western life and a more transcendent non-Western spirituality--signalled by Self's opening gesture to The Tibetan Book of the Dead and by the all-seeing Aborigine Phar Lap Jones. Readers familiar with his satire and pyrotechnic wordplay--both still well in place--may initially be thrown by the book's unexpected lurches of narrative voice and locale and its mysticism--but they'd be well advised to give it a chance. How The Dead Live is a big book with big ideas, and quite definitely Will Self's most ambitious and mature work to date.--Alan Stewart

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A masterpiece - Rated
I won't repeat all the perceptive and wise observations that follow below, but just echo that reviewer who described reading this book as a reawakening to all that great literature has to offer. I laughed, I marvelled, and cried. It was surprisingly touching, almost heartbreaking in parts, and wise. And all the while encompassing a depth, breadth and richness of language you rarely meet these days.

british broadcorpsing corpsoration - Rated
I'm not even half way through this book but already it's got me firmly in its grip. It majestically deals with one of life's greatest mysteries by primarily a tongue in cheek means... Lily reminds me of a rather darker version of my grandma who is still a wisecracker at 92 and all this despite being bedridden for the best part of 4 years. Ok so Self's vocabulary/diction can be a tad intimidating at times (albeit less so if you have a dictionary to hand) but he's obviously a literary genius and on almost every page there is something witty albeit sinister going on. What more can I say? A total triumph! It deals with the unthinkable (dying of cancer) by mowing the associated feelings that may ensue down with a steamroller and then shooting them with a machine gun at point blank range. Ok, so the critics may say this is insensitive and has all the subtlety of a fairy elephant but so what... after all laughter is the best medicine and if I die laughing (like the man in Mary Poppins) at this book then so be it. Self is the death of jesters! Read it now!

A treasure! - Rated
I have just finished 'How the Dead Live' and thoroughly enjoyed it, having been gripped from the Epilogue. Such beautifully crafted sentences, and so many ideas per paragraph; Self's command of the language is formidable and a pleasure, not only making me smile but occassionally laugh outloud. Admittedly it's challenging in parts, but that was part of my enjoyment. I cannot to relate to the more negative reviews and must suppose to each his/her own etc...

Worth persevering with, I felt - Rated
I bought this book because I'd enjoyed My Idea of Fun, and Cock & Bull. I'd consider myself quite widely read, but I really struggled through the early chapters. This is where, I presume, those negative comments about the book on this site come from. The plot is slow and dull - Self's laboured similes don't help - and page after page I found I couldn't care less whether or when he would kill the old trout off. In fact, I sometimes half-hoped that I might die mid-paragraph to save me having to read another over-descriptive reminiscence about her dead son. You know, just because you can write how people think, that doesn't make it entertaining literature. Anyway, reading the Amazon book reviews kept me interested enough to soldier through a few pages a night. Reviews seemed so divided on whether Self is genius or dunce that I felt I had to keep going just to see what they meant!

Finally, 155 pages into the thing I found the plot developed and the pages instantly became more turnable: a real story, at last. The same characters that had frustrated me in the first six chapters were fleshed out with real personalities and direction, and sub-plots I cared about appeared as if from nowhere. If Self set out to deliberately starve the reader in the first half of the story to force him to gorge himself on the second, then it worked on me. Granted, the final twist in the plot is rather kitsch and you can see it coming from a hundred paces, but by then I was entertained enough by the main characters' destinies that I didn't mind.

I still felt more a sense of survival once I'd reached the end, of growing and learning from the experience, rather than actually enjoying it - like one does after an enema, perhaps - but I was glad I'd persevered to enjoy the second part after the tricky first. I also sensed there was satire and philosophy between the lines that was either beneath me - like everything about the character Lithy - or beyond me, and meant for smarter, drier wits; I'm not sure which.

Not one of Self's best then, but still worth the time.

Excellent Piece of Work - Rated
This book has to be one of the most inventive and unusual I've read. It takes a little time to get used to it and for the story to actually "kick in", but once it does, boy, are you glad you stuck with it!! What a tremendous book. Self's language is as creative as usual and this is an absolute treat to read. So satisfying. One of his best.