‘How the Dead Live’ by Will Self

I went into Waterstone’s and handled How the Dead Live a number of times before eventually coming to my senses and buying it. I was torn between this and several other Will Self titles, including the 2012 Man Booker Prize-nominated Umbrella, but I believe this skull-adorned cover must have won me over in the end. Pardon me for breaking the old book-cover rule…I do it a lot. Anyway, Will Self’s How the Dead Live was published in 2000, initially by Bloomsbury, while this particular edition was issued by Penguin in 2009. How the Dead Live is the story of one Lily Bloom (yes, another heroine named Lily) who, after dying of breast cancer, finds herself living in the fictitious London borough of Dulston, a kind of fetid death ghetto sandwiched between Islington and Hackney.

A markedly unpleasant character in life, Lily remains so in death. Though, in amongst attacks directed at her former husband and her strait-laced older daughter, Lily displays considerable compassion towards her younger daughter Natasha, even in spite (or perhaps because of) a serious heroin habit. Lily’s daughters are her only company in her final days, as she is shuttled back and forth between home and hospital, however the elder of the two seems less concerned about losing her mother and more concerned about what might be bequeathed to her. In the meantime, Lily is busy adjusting to Dulston and her new companions, namely a singing foetus (yes really) and a son who was hit by a car and killed in what may as well have been another life. It must be said, How the Dead Live is populated by a colourful cast of characters.

Structurally, the novel is split into three parts: Dying, Dead and Deader, with each part detailing a different stage in Lily’s life, or rather her death. There is also a prologue cleverly disguised as an epilogue, adding to the morbid charm of How the Dead Live, a charm that is evident on every page. The book’s tone and subject matter remind me strongly of Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, and indeed there are many similarities between the two, however I would contend that this is a much more challenging read. For How the Dead Live is as inaccessibly literary as novels come, especially seeing as it was published only twelve or thirteen years ago, and a close reading is necessary in order to appreciate Will Self’s unique, detail-rich prose.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in January 2013.