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How the Dead Live
Will Self has one of literature's most astonishing imaginations, and in How the Dead Live his talent has come to full flower. Lily Bloom is an angry, aging American transplanted to England, now losing her battle with cancer. Attended by nurses and her two daughters -- lumpy Charlotte, a dour, successful businesswoman, and beautiful Natasha, a junkie -- Lily takes us on a surreal, opinionated trip through the stages of a lifetime of lust and rage. From '40s career girl to '50s tippling adulteress to '70s PR flak, Lily has seen America and England through most of a century of riotous and unreal change. And then it's over. Lily catches a cab with her death guide, Aboriginal wizard Phar Lap Jones, and enters the shockingly banal world of the dead: the suburbs. She discovers smoking without consequences and gets another PR job, where none of her coworkers notices that she's not alive. She gets to know her roommates: Rude Boy, her terminally furious son who died in a car accident at age nine; Lithy, a fetus that died before she ever knew it existed; the Fats, huge formless shapes composed of all the weight she's ever gained or lost. How the Dead Live is Will Self's most remarkable and expansively human book, an important, disturbing vision of our time.
404 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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4384 people want to read
About the author
Will Self
172 books995 followersWilliam Self is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School, Christ's College Finchley, and Exeter College, Oxford. He was married to the late journalist Deborah Orr.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 156 reviews
January 29, 2016
How do the dead live? Well, they don't go to heaven where the angels fly, and they don't go to the lake of fire and fry on the 4th of July. What they do do is move to a different suburb or a different part of the city, living and working alongside the living for the rest of eternity. This horrifyingly mundane vision of the afterlife plays as the central conceit of Will Self's superlative-sputtering third novel, allowing its narrator, Lily Bloom, to die agonizingly from cancer and then stick around for a decade of stewing in her own rage and disappointment.
And Lilly has a lot that disappoints her: her two letdown daughters, two failed marriages, a cold American upbringing, her own slow and inescapable weight gain, her feelings of being shafted out of the sexual revolution of the 60's, the vapidity of English society, her own Jewish heritage, her failures as a pocket pen designer, hell, the whole fucking WORLD disappoints Lily! So the afterlife is equally disappointing, even with its byzantine bureaucratic structure, and her aborigine spirit guide, Phar Lap Jones; and the ghost of her foul-mouthed 9 year-old son; and the pop standard singing spirit of the fossilized fetus she never knew was pocketed away in her womb; and the gibbering ghosts of all the fat she has ever lost but gained back; and even the occasional tired tries at discorporated banging with a fellow lingering dead.
So when Lily is not railing and spitting acid abouthow much life and now death sucks, she stalks her two daughters, one, a pudgy snob who has married an equally snobby but ultra-successful owner of a chain of office supply stores; the other, the wonderfully selfish and anemic femme fatale, Natasha. Natasha serves as an inverted analog of (recently (when written) and permanently clean) Will Self's own years of drug abuse; and for those who think Will Self is just a druggie writer, well, portraying yourself as a scabby, thieving junkie isn't exactly a flattering self-estimation). The two sisters' lifestyles serve as an open season for Self to satirize the increasingly consumerism-obsessed culture of 1990's London, as well serves as the fulcrum for a harrowing and ominous series of deaths, births, and rebirths.
How the Dead Live is a tour de force not only in sustained voice (Lily's profane, pessimistic view of the world is both hilarious and relentless, but not necessarily always correct in its observations), but also in satiric invention and existential brooding. Heartbreaking, hilarious and horrifying, How the Dead Live is my favorite Self I've read so far. You're fucking up by not reading Will Self. Quit fucking up. Read How the Dead Live.
And Lilly has a lot that disappoints her: her two letdown daughters, two failed marriages, a cold American upbringing, her own slow and inescapable weight gain, her feelings of being shafted out of the sexual revolution of the 60's, the vapidity of English society, her own Jewish heritage, her failures as a pocket pen designer, hell, the whole fucking WORLD disappoints Lily! So the afterlife is equally disappointing, even with its byzantine bureaucratic structure, and her aborigine spirit guide, Phar Lap Jones; and the ghost of her foul-mouthed 9 year-old son; and the pop standard singing spirit of the fossilized fetus she never knew was pocketed away in her womb; and the gibbering ghosts of all the fat she has ever lost but gained back; and even the occasional tired tries at discorporated banging with a fellow lingering dead.
So when Lily is not railing and spitting acid abouthow much life and now death sucks, she stalks her two daughters, one, a pudgy snob who has married an equally snobby but ultra-successful owner of a chain of office supply stores; the other, the wonderfully selfish and anemic femme fatale, Natasha. Natasha serves as an inverted analog of (recently (when written) and permanently clean) Will Self's own years of drug abuse; and for those who think Will Self is just a druggie writer, well, portraying yourself as a scabby, thieving junkie isn't exactly a flattering self-estimation). The two sisters' lifestyles serve as an open season for Self to satirize the increasingly consumerism-obsessed culture of 1990's London, as well serves as the fulcrum for a harrowing and ominous series of deaths, births, and rebirths.
How the Dead Live is a tour de force not only in sustained voice (Lily's profane, pessimistic view of the world is both hilarious and relentless, but not necessarily always correct in its observations), but also in satiric invention and existential brooding. Heartbreaking, hilarious and horrifying, How the Dead Live is my favorite Self I've read so far. You're fucking up by not reading Will Self. Quit fucking up. Read How the Dead Live.
September 3, 2016
Some thoughts on Will Self’s How The Dead Live. The first 280 or so pages deliver the constant narrative pleasure of some illicit drug. One is constantly buoyed along by the wonderful storytelling. His model, or one of them, is clearly Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
American Lily Bloom, twice-married, now a widow living in London, is dying of cancer--and then stone dead of it. We are there at her long deathbed scene after which she finds herself non-living in a London of the astral plane in her subtle body. We share her last days and the decade or so of her afterlife. She begins to smoke again since it can't possibly harm her. Lily non-lives in a London where only the dead know the little out of the way places, in this case Dulston, somewhere near Dalston, a complete neighborhood of the dead. This arbitrarily imagined world makes a kind of crazy sense, so vividly is it rendered, so consistent is its patterning and rules of order.
The dead meet in groups at the community center to learn how to become dead. It's a 12-step program. The afterlife it turns out is as problematic and bureaucratic as life itself. It's also intolerably banal. Lily is led in her death odyssey by dead Australian aborigine, Phar Lap Jones. She is able to visit the living, non-living as she does in the midst of them. She visits Natalia her junkie daughter--a very sad story Self mistakenly thinks he can make funny--and her materialist daughter Charlene who with her husband owns a chain of stores called Waste of Paper. Once dead Lily is free to witness the comings and goings of these two daughters. Natalia, or Natty, is one of the saddest portraits of a junky I have ever read, William Burroughs’s tales not excepted. Natty has turned herself into a walking talking blight on humanity. She is a raving lunatic beauty, a complete waste of human flesh. She is a whore living with her pimp for junk.
Lily is never enlightened by her own passing. She is deep in what the Buddhists term samsara: the endless cycle of birth and suffering and death and rebirth. Enlightenment? She's too pissed off for that. She must alas be reborn continually until she sees the light, which in her case may be several hundreds lives off. About page 280 or so I must admit I began to feel rather brutalized. Self's word play is as relentless as the tone, though it never rises to the subtle sometimes italicized level of another model, Martin Amis.
However, there can be no question of the author's mastery. In the first 280 pages there are long brainy sections that simply sing and these can be terribly funny as well. The storytelling in this part is gripping and vivid. However, a novel of ideas this is not. How The Dead Live, like Money, is a voice novel in which tone becomes everything and overrides form.
Sometimes, too, there's the madcap sensibility of Samuel Beckett. If you're looking for deft modulation of tone this is not the novel for you. It's a no-holds-barred all out rant against the unfairness of life and death. Here we feel the influence of the anarchist Céline most sharply.
I was perplexed by the italicized "Christmas 2001" sections. These sections really become tedious until one discovers, at the very end, what they mean. Self does not sufficiently adumbrate. I was absolutely lost reading them. Note: being somewhat lost or rather lost is part of the fun of fiction. But I was entirely lost in these sections, which made them seem to me like pointless padding. Poor editing me thinks.
In closing, let me say again that there are long patches of beautiful writing here and many funny bits. But the book is at least 75 pages too long. A judicious editing the novel certainly deserved and did not appear to get. I recommend it nevertheless. Read it, stay with it if you can, but be prepared to bleed.
American Lily Bloom, twice-married, now a widow living in London, is dying of cancer--and then stone dead of it. We are there at her long deathbed scene after which she finds herself non-living in a London of the astral plane in her subtle body. We share her last days and the decade or so of her afterlife. She begins to smoke again since it can't possibly harm her. Lily non-lives in a London where only the dead know the little out of the way places, in this case Dulston, somewhere near Dalston, a complete neighborhood of the dead. This arbitrarily imagined world makes a kind of crazy sense, so vividly is it rendered, so consistent is its patterning and rules of order.
The dead meet in groups at the community center to learn how to become dead. It's a 12-step program. The afterlife it turns out is as problematic and bureaucratic as life itself. It's also intolerably banal. Lily is led in her death odyssey by dead Australian aborigine, Phar Lap Jones. She is able to visit the living, non-living as she does in the midst of them. She visits Natalia her junkie daughter--a very sad story Self mistakenly thinks he can make funny--and her materialist daughter Charlene who with her husband owns a chain of stores called Waste of Paper. Once dead Lily is free to witness the comings and goings of these two daughters. Natalia, or Natty, is one of the saddest portraits of a junky I have ever read, William Burroughs’s tales not excepted. Natty has turned herself into a walking talking blight on humanity. She is a raving lunatic beauty, a complete waste of human flesh. She is a whore living with her pimp for junk.
Lily is never enlightened by her own passing. She is deep in what the Buddhists term samsara: the endless cycle of birth and suffering and death and rebirth. Enlightenment? She's too pissed off for that. She must alas be reborn continually until she sees the light, which in her case may be several hundreds lives off. About page 280 or so I must admit I began to feel rather brutalized. Self's word play is as relentless as the tone, though it never rises to the subtle sometimes italicized level of another model, Martin Amis.
However, there can be no question of the author's mastery. In the first 280 pages there are long brainy sections that simply sing and these can be terribly funny as well. The storytelling in this part is gripping and vivid. However, a novel of ideas this is not. How The Dead Live, like Money, is a voice novel in which tone becomes everything and overrides form.
Sometimes, too, there's the madcap sensibility of Samuel Beckett. If you're looking for deft modulation of tone this is not the novel for you. It's a no-holds-barred all out rant against the unfairness of life and death. Here we feel the influence of the anarchist Céline most sharply.
I was perplexed by the italicized "Christmas 2001" sections. These sections really become tedious until one discovers, at the very end, what they mean. Self does not sufficiently adumbrate. I was absolutely lost reading them. Note: being somewhat lost or rather lost is part of the fun of fiction. But I was entirely lost in these sections, which made them seem to me like pointless padding. Poor editing me thinks.
In closing, let me say again that there are long patches of beautiful writing here and many funny bits. But the book is at least 75 pages too long. A judicious editing the novel certainly deserved and did not appear to get. I recommend it nevertheless. Read it, stay with it if you can, but be prepared to bleed.
December 9, 2011
I always run at Will Self books a bit like one of those annoying small yappie dogs that bounces up and down like they're on an invisible bit of elastic... well the ones that aren't now ensconced in expensive handbags anyway.
I do this because my brain always tells me that I love Will Self... stupid brain. Why do you always forget? I like the idea of liking Will Self and I generally like most of the premises for his twisted tales (of course there is always the exception to the rule, this exception being http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... )and he appears on all the pseudo intellectual TV shows that I know I should like/watch/revere but then it all goes a bit wrong from here with the actual reading of the book.
How the Dead Live just didn't stretch it's legs for me. Lily, the aforementioned living dead of the title is not a very engaging woman - she's had a tough life. The afterlife is proving to be just as tough because really, rather disappointingly, the afterlife is just life with all the colour drained out of it and all the same morons and issues you surrounded yourself with when you were alive are still there. Imagine living in a really dull home video of your own life but shot in sepia on 8mm. This then slowly repeats itself throughout eternity. Well, this is more of less how the dead live. Or Will Self's vision of it anyway. Add to this that all the bits of yourself you shed during life come back to haunt you in a very visual way... all the kilos of fat shed lurch around behind you like a sulky child and if you're a lady ghost apparently tiny ghostly abortions will swirl around your head tethered there like some sort of unpleasant foetal helium filled balloon. So you're dead but not gone and with the added benefit of an aboriginal spirit guide and the understanding that your end of days is kind of like a final salary pension in reverse.
Right....
I wanted to love this and a tiny bit of my not-quite-so-dead-inside soul did love it. Some of the ideas are clever, Self throws in a broad melange of cultural and cross-cultural references and is suitably off the wall but the characterisation just did not grab me. I can also surmise that when Will Self dies I do not want to go wherever he believes he is going (which based on this book, might actually be nowhere but a bedsit in Peckham).
I do this because my brain always tells me that I love Will Self... stupid brain. Why do you always forget? I like the idea of liking Will Self and I generally like most of the premises for his twisted tales (of course there is always the exception to the rule, this exception being http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... )and he appears on all the pseudo intellectual TV shows that I know I should like/watch/revere but then it all goes a bit wrong from here with the actual reading of the book.
How the Dead Live just didn't stretch it's legs for me. Lily, the aforementioned living dead of the title is not a very engaging woman - she's had a tough life. The afterlife is proving to be just as tough because really, rather disappointingly, the afterlife is just life with all the colour drained out of it and all the same morons and issues you surrounded yourself with when you were alive are still there. Imagine living in a really dull home video of your own life but shot in sepia on 8mm. This then slowly repeats itself throughout eternity. Well, this is more of less how the dead live. Or Will Self's vision of it anyway. Add to this that all the bits of yourself you shed during life come back to haunt you in a very visual way... all the kilos of fat shed lurch around behind you like a sulky child and if you're a lady ghost apparently tiny ghostly abortions will swirl around your head tethered there like some sort of unpleasant foetal helium filled balloon. So you're dead but not gone and with the added benefit of an aboriginal spirit guide and the understanding that your end of days is kind of like a final salary pension in reverse.
Right....
I wanted to love this and a tiny bit of my not-quite-so-dead-inside soul did love it. Some of the ideas are clever, Self throws in a broad melange of cultural and cross-cultural references and is suitably off the wall but the characterisation just did not grab me. I can also surmise that when Will Self dies I do not want to go wherever he believes he is going (which based on this book, might actually be nowhere but a bedsit in Peckham).
January 22, 2012
Wow. That was horrible. Visceral, cruel, obnoxious. But somehow utterly compelling, hilarious and life affirming. My previous contact with Will Self was from TV, and I guess I expected something more Amis like, and less enthralling. How the Dead Live is about Lily Bloom - a chronicle of her late life, her death, and her afterlife. Her major accomplishments in a rather average life are her two daughters, who's lives she follows from death as they spiral in and out of control. The story is gripping enough alone, but it's raised above that by the detail, the witticisms, the spots of satire. It's absolutely devastating witnessing Lily come to terms with the limits of her life, and even more limiting death, and things don't really improve from there. But by being so bleak, it helps to highlight the little things we should be thankful for, the fact that boring isn't always a disaster for humanity, and that time wasted on things that matter little, tends to come back to haunt you.
July 6, 2010
I thought they were kidding, but you really do need a thesaurus to read Will Self's writing. There's a great story in here somewhere, but it's lost amid his self-conscious effort to show you just how smart he is.
January 21, 2018
Definitely not my favorite Self novel. He usually has a certain understated brilliance that exudes from his work; however, I found this one terribly difficult to get into and then once it hit its stride it was rather prosaic and dull. Interesting premise that unfortunately has been done in a better manner by some other authors. Luckily Self still has two other older works that sound phenomenal. This wasn’t among my favorites.
February 14, 2016
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. I didn't have to force myself to finish it, but I was eager to be done because I didn't like spending time with Lilly Bloom, alive or dead. The story is told by Lilly Bloom who is dying, then dead from breast cancer. Will Self said that the story is based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead and as a Buddhist I find the story believable. Lilly dies of cancer and after death is ushered into her life as a dead person by Phar Lap Jones, an Aborigine from Australia who wears cowboy boots, jeans, mirror sun glasses and a big white Stetson. She is accompanied in death by Lithy, the lithopedion, a calcified foetus that fell out of her uterus upon her death and now sings pop songs from the 70s, 80, and 90s, Rude Boy, her son who was hit by a car and age 9 and now runs around swearing at people and waving his penis, and the Fats, the eyeless, blobs of fat that consist of all the weight she gained and lost in her life who chant, "old and fat, old and fat" at Lilly.
The laws of Karma are in action here. Lilly's attachments to her daughters, her guilt over her son's death, her obsession with sex, and her anger at her husbands keep her stuck in a London she does not like. Phar Lap tries a few times to let Lilly know that she could be free off this cycle if she wanted to be, but Lilly is too attached. The addictions and negative emotions that distracted her in life (her Karmic seeds) follow her in death and ultimately bloom because she will not let go of them.
Will Self is a gifted wordsmith. His stream of consciousness style is engaging, intelligent, witty, and flows very smoothly. He created a London of the dead that felt like an alternate London, complete with knowable, quite original characters. The story rambled this way and that at times as Lilly looks back at her 60 some years revealing to the reader the roots of her attachments, and narrates the lives of her daughters to us. No one was likeable and Karma does not guarantee a happy ending. The Karmic seeds Lilly planted and nurtured are the seeds that blossomed. I think the book is worth reading, but I'm glad I'm done with it.
The laws of Karma are in action here. Lilly's attachments to her daughters, her guilt over her son's death, her obsession with sex, and her anger at her husbands keep her stuck in a London she does not like. Phar Lap tries a few times to let Lilly know that she could be free off this cycle if she wanted to be, but Lilly is too attached. The addictions and negative emotions that distracted her in life (her Karmic seeds) follow her in death and ultimately bloom because she will not let go of them.
Will Self is a gifted wordsmith. His stream of consciousness style is engaging, intelligent, witty, and flows very smoothly. He created a London of the dead that felt like an alternate London, complete with knowable, quite original characters. The story rambled this way and that at times as Lilly looks back at her 60 some years revealing to the reader the roots of her attachments, and narrates the lives of her daughters to us. No one was likeable and Karma does not guarantee a happy ending. The Karmic seeds Lilly planted and nurtured are the seeds that blossomed. I think the book is worth reading, but I'm glad I'm done with it.
July 29, 2025
A vast ichor-black death exhalation across the latter 20th century. Self's patter, his puns and asides and alliteration and word transformations and endless allusions to everything from lit to pop songs, sets up a deceptive burble behind which his unyielding cynicism dances. In fact though, moreso than the Dantean story of the dull disappointment of life bleeding into the dull disappointment of death (and beyond all locked in an endless cycle of drudge, it seems), this patter, this banter, seems to be Self's animating force. About a third of it falls flat, maybe a third or more sails right past me unremarked, and a third or so hits the mark -- but the sheer constancy of the voice and conversation gives it all a cohesion where it doesn't really matter which of the three is happening at any given moment. Self's voice is probably one of his major assets, but it also wore on me somewhat over 400 pages. But when the story does launch into its best bits, it's totally gripping and highly unique, a dire portrait of bitter, universal regret.
December 9, 2010
You're always going to have at least an unusual plot line setting or protagonist in a Self novel and this is no exception. You're told the story of Lily Bloom as she sees it in life death and rebirth. I often feel with Will Self that there is something brilliant he is working at but he just misses pulling it off flawlessly. That isn't to say he isn't worth reading. He definitely is and his use of language even when he stumbles a bit is beautiful. I couldn't put out of my mind how much this is based on his mother's (and in turn his) life. I think that made it a bit more poignant to me and perhaps made it easier to like Lily flaws and all. However I think that there is something about Lily and her story that doesn't make her entirely unlike-able while managing to portray her as a true person. This departure from the usual habit authors have of making Mary Jane characters that people can automatically identify with really drives home what this book is about in part. If anyone ever comes very close to death with enough time to reflect upon their true natures and their life's path(s) it all becomes a bit obvious we are all unlike-able in some way.Self might be a bit off putting to some people but all his books have stuck with me. It is worth the effort to overcome any discomfiture you feel from any of his real or perceived pretensions. For those of us who never noticed it his novels are an incredible treat.
September 10, 2020
Rounded down from 3.5 ⭐️
A family member let me borrow this book, it’s the first novel I have read by Will Self. It follows Lily bloom as she deals with end-stage cancer, and dies. It then continues to follow her through death beyond.
The first section of the novel wasn’t enjoyable for me. I find Self’s writing style a little tricky to get on with. There’s no doubt that he’s a very intelligent man, but the long intellectual ramblings often left me feeling lost. I also really really did not like Lily bloom (in fact I don’t know if I’ve ever disliked a character quite so much). To start with I wasn’t certain I’d be able to finish, but I’m glad I persevered.
I really enjoyed the concepts that Self came up with for the afterlife. When it got to this part of the book I struggled to put it down! It was so original and captivating, I just wanted to consume it all! I particularly loved the Christmas 2001 sections once I realised what they were about.
Unfortunately, I feel the book lost a little of its mojo towards the end. But I will always remember it for its unique ideas. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before!
A family member let me borrow this book, it’s the first novel I have read by Will Self. It follows Lily bloom as she deals with end-stage cancer, and dies. It then continues to follow her through death beyond.
The first section of the novel wasn’t enjoyable for me. I find Self’s writing style a little tricky to get on with. There’s no doubt that he’s a very intelligent man, but the long intellectual ramblings often left me feeling lost. I also really really did not like Lily bloom (in fact I don’t know if I’ve ever disliked a character quite so much). To start with I wasn’t certain I’d be able to finish, but I’m glad I persevered.
I really enjoyed the concepts that Self came up with for the afterlife. When it got to this part of the book I struggled to put it down! It was so original and captivating, I just wanted to consume it all! I particularly loved the Christmas 2001 sections once I realised what they were about.
Unfortunately, I feel the book lost a little of its mojo towards the end. But I will always remember it for its unique ideas. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before!
May 31, 2025
3.5 stars. An entertaining, overly long novel about Lily Bloom dying and ten years in her afterlife. I enjoyed the first half of the novel with its witty comments but gradually lost interest in Lily trying to get involved with her daughter’s lives.
Lily Bloom dies from cancer and is then transported to her new residence near Dalston. With her is Aboriginal spirit guide, Phar Lap Jones, and her dead 9 years old son Rude Boy. Lily gradually learns the ways of the dead.
Here is a sample of the author’s writing style:
‘Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the one thing I had to do in life.’
‘Death is its own best friend, and our dreams know it.’
‘I studied him and realized that madness is the last defence of the mind when it can’t hope to reconcile itself with events; I too was standing between routine and the unknowable.’
This book was first published in 2000.
Lily Bloom dies from cancer and is then transported to her new residence near Dalston. With her is Aboriginal spirit guide, Phar Lap Jones, and her dead 9 years old son Rude Boy. Lily gradually learns the ways of the dead.
Here is a sample of the author’s writing style:
‘Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the one thing I had to do in life.’
‘Death is its own best friend, and our dreams know it.’
‘I studied him and realized that madness is the last defence of the mind when it can’t hope to reconcile itself with events; I too was standing between routine and the unknowable.’
This book was first published in 2000.
November 24, 2013
I think I'm a bit stupid for Will Self novels. I really liked the underlying concepts of the book, but this was a hard slog for me. The passages from Christmas 2001 in italics, I didn't really understand until at least two thirds of the way through. It felt like it was about 100 pages too long, I found myself skipping through the last few chapters as it didn't seem to be adding anything new to the story. But overall, the idea was an interesting and disturbing one, I'll never pass Dalston without thinking "Dulston" again.
February 17, 2023
Self dead before after all-between sicko bashing good time!
April 8, 2020
I have chosen How the Dead Live by Will Self as the most perfect book to write my review about. The reason for that, is through the book several items can be found related to modern concepts.
Firstly, the novel's main theme is the question of afterlife, the barrier between life and death. The main character Lily Bloom is dying because of cancer. Her two daughters Natasha and Charlotte represent opposites. Why this books belongs to the genre of fiction, is that Lily takes us on a trip after her death. She has a company, a guiding spirit and she comes across with ones she could never imagine but I won't tell with whom because it would be spoiler.
To make a comparison of what makes a novel modern and fictitious I could draw a comparison here with Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, because both of the novels deals with some kind of an addiction, both writers use humour in the masterpieces. The two books reveal and represent us different viewpoint of life and the fact that different people see different opportunities in life, something that is trash for someone, might mean the world for someone else. Our dark side of the world is someone's brightest view. This also refers to the subgenre of How the Dead Live because it which is the psychological fiction.
The techniques Self used were humour, some kind of a satiric and sentimental approach. Additionally, why I consider this Self book is because it deals with a common question that lots of people can have in mind: afterlife. What comes after death? Angels, heaven, all-in-white, St.Peter waiting for us? Or simply nothing? The unconscious state of mind, like sleeping without dreaming? In Self's interpretation, afterlife is also as problematic as life itself, or if you like, after death, it is also life-like. This is a relatively new method again, displaying afterlife as not heavenly and saint and all positive thoughts about it. Self makes his character further living after passing away and stuck between worlds or phases of life before reborning or re-entering the world of the living ones.
Kanalas Gréta TLEJMX
Firstly, the novel's main theme is the question of afterlife, the barrier between life and death. The main character Lily Bloom is dying because of cancer. Her two daughters Natasha and Charlotte represent opposites. Why this books belongs to the genre of fiction, is that Lily takes us on a trip after her death. She has a company, a guiding spirit and she comes across with ones she could never imagine but I won't tell with whom because it would be spoiler.
To make a comparison of what makes a novel modern and fictitious I could draw a comparison here with Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, because both of the novels deals with some kind of an addiction, both writers use humour in the masterpieces. The two books reveal and represent us different viewpoint of life and the fact that different people see different opportunities in life, something that is trash for someone, might mean the world for someone else. Our dark side of the world is someone's brightest view. This also refers to the subgenre of How the Dead Live because it which is the psychological fiction.
The techniques Self used were humour, some kind of a satiric and sentimental approach. Additionally, why I consider this Self book is because it deals with a common question that lots of people can have in mind: afterlife. What comes after death? Angels, heaven, all-in-white, St.Peter waiting for us? Or simply nothing? The unconscious state of mind, like sleeping without dreaming? In Self's interpretation, afterlife is also as problematic as life itself, or if you like, after death, it is also life-like. This is a relatively new method again, displaying afterlife as not heavenly and saint and all positive thoughts about it. Self makes his character further living after passing away and stuck between worlds or phases of life before reborning or re-entering the world of the living ones.
Kanalas Gréta TLEJMX
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2022
This was my third Will Self novel. His Great Apes is definitely my favourite, but How the Dead Live is one of Self's more accessible works, and may be a better entry point than his denser The Book of Dave. The protagonist, the acerbic Lily Bloom dies from cancer. And Lily takes us on an opinionated diatribe about life and her two daughters: lumpy Charlotte, a successful businesswoman who is more conservative and loyal to her mother, and Lily's obvious fave, the beautiful Natasha, a junkie on a downward spiral.
Self continues his irreverent ways, with Lily initially catching a cab with a contemporary Charon, a Greek taxi driver, and she is accompanied by a tour guide to death, an Aborigine named Phar Lap Jones. Yet he world of the dead is yet just another horror-filled London suburb.
Lily amplifies Self's natural satirical voice, and although I enjoyed it, How the Dead is far too heavy hitting throughout.
Self continues his irreverent ways, with Lily initially catching a cab with a contemporary Charon, a Greek taxi driver, and she is accompanied by a tour guide to death, an Aborigine named Phar Lap Jones. Yet he world of the dead is yet just another horror-filled London suburb.
Lily amplifies Self's natural satirical voice, and although I enjoyed it, How the Dead is far too heavy hitting throughout.
August 25, 2017
Self's dark, witty word-play is on full throttle in this phantasmagorical tale of life and death and death in life and life in death and... well, you get the drift. In his usual stream-of-consciousness style, he untangles and re-tangles the story of Lily Bloom and her daughters, assorted calcified fetuses, living fat beings, drugs, alcohol, vitriol, Jewishness, and a nightmarish vision of London in which the afterlife is a demented bureaucracy of Kafkaesque proportions. I struggled to believe in Lily's voice as that of an American female (too butch, too English-idiomatic), but maybe that's a unnecessary quibble for a book in which anything can happen, which it frequently does. And when it does, it's often depressing or surreal, or both. Decidedly not for the average reader who 'just likes a good story'.
November 9, 2020
With a title like this I knew it probably wasn’t going to be a cheery read and did question why I would pick it up now with everything going on in the world. And I’m not going to lie, after reading the epilogue I nearly put it back it down again. But the first section was weird readable, the poor Lily being told she was near the end of her days and some if the thoughts that went through her head. However once she went into the after life (if that’s the right word), it lost me again. There were bits that I thought were quite clever, people take solace in the fact that meet their loved ones again, and that maybe the reality isn’t all rainbows and flowers, or that all that weight you’ve gained and lost comes back to haunt you. However those last two parts of the book were a long old slog and not really my sort of book.
January 19, 2011
recommended by a real scotsman!
if will self wrote a blockbuster like john grisham, some sort if insipid, edge of your seat court room morality play (who SAID usa diplomats can't be torturers too and who SAID usaid was there to only hand out sacks of corn and abstinence tracts?) the dead would always win, everybody would need a pocket dictionary and publishers would have grown some sort or warty integrity growth somewhere embarrassing. that said, Will Self probably won't be churning the blockbuster out anytime too soon. But if he did....
if will self wrote a blockbuster like john grisham, some sort if insipid, edge of your seat court room morality play (who SAID usa diplomats can't be torturers too and who SAID usaid was there to only hand out sacks of corn and abstinence tracts?) the dead would always win, everybody would need a pocket dictionary and publishers would have grown some sort or warty integrity growth somewhere embarrassing. that said, Will Self probably won't be churning the blockbuster out anytime too soon. But if he did....
December 22, 2011
Eerily accurate. I grew up just down the road from Crouch End, and can confirm that now the Oxfam shops are selectively stocked and every pub has pork belly on the menu, it is indeed choc-full of the living dead.
April 5, 2012
WOW!!!! I'll never, never want to gain or loose weight!!!
October 22, 2024
Reason read: reading 1001, Word of the month. This is the first book by the author Will Self for me. I was actually surprised that I liked a lot about it and even more surprised that in general, people do not like this book. I guess what took me in is the fact that this is about an old lady dying and dead of cancer and it reviews her life as she lived it as well as her life as dead. I found this did not seem like too much of a stretch for me. It makes perfect sense to be that there is a dimension where the dead might hange out. I didn't like how much Lily swore and the words of her swearing but I felt like her voice "fit" the character of Lily. What people hate about the book; overly detailed (and I think repetitive), grotesque (death and life often are grotesque), too morbid (it's about death and drug abuse and, pregnancies), and insensitive (a little humor helps to make horror a bit more tolerable. Themes include loss, death, grief, identity, and afterlife. Another criticism is that Self uses too many literary devices. I confess - I didn't notice. I am going to rate this book 4 stars because obviously I didn't hate it as much as others have hated it.
December 2, 2018
Self is the kind of novelist and journalist whom I consider to be an anti-fragile. He possesses a high status among leftists par excellence. He's like a priest. He specifically good at making the elites feel guilty about consumption and their peaceful lives.
I enjoyed this book. I didn't particularly find the writing to be out of this world, or something that touched me deeply, it's the man behind the book whom I really like and therefore, enjoy what he conveys through his characters.
I enjoyed this book. I didn't particularly find the writing to be out of this world, or something that touched me deeply, it's the man behind the book whom I really like and therefore, enjoy what he conveys through his characters.
September 6, 2025
Mmmm pas vraiment ce à quoi je m'attendais... L'univers de l'auteur est particulier et on aimerait y rentrer correctement mais on reste trop facilement extérieur au développement de l'histoire
December 11, 2013
Reading a Will Self novel is a bit like hearing the man give one of his current Radio 4 talks - an annoying drone which seems half-determined to bore you to death, half-anxious to bludgeon you into submission with overwrought wordplay and sententious allusion... until suddenly a flash of brilliance wipes away all the irritation that has gone before, and you begin to think that this man is not only very clever indeed, but also a deep and humane thinker. Rarely can a writer's habitual literary voice so closely have echoed his actual, physical one.
I think that the self-conscious cleverness, and wearing of one's intellect on the sleeve of one's artfully-crumpled jacket is, for male novelists of my generation at least, something of a neurotic tic, born perhaps of the rise and fall of grammar school education within a short couple of decades. The concomitant insecurity resultant on a tension between the continued contempt of a moneyed elite towards interlopers on their Oxbridge privileges, and the total incomprehension of the unlettered celebrity culture towards any form of intellectual exertion, has left the middle-class bright white literary boy (women and ethnic minority writers still have something to prove to their own peers and a media hungry for novelty, however unjustified that concept might be) with a great deal of anxiety. He feels he has to impress, and resorts to those techniques which got him recognised at school - puns, seemingly casual scholarship, outrageous attitudes - particularly toward sensitive areas such as race and sex. Will Self has the added burden of having deliberately placed himself in the line of descent of two deceased greats of the previous generation, Anthony Burgess and JG Ballard - both social outsiders in a way that no member of the North London middle-classes could ever be. He has a lot to prove.
And now I admit that, for all its - and its author's - faults, I loved this novel. Like I say, the flashes of brilliance, in both perspicacity and style, more than compensated for the rather leaden filler passages full of sixth-form wordplay and nudge-nudge-wink-wink intellectual reference. It is a story not so much about How the Dead Live - although a recent radio talk by the author has cast some light on what he means by this, and also by one of the notions in this book that it's possible for the dead to become 'deader' - but rather about how the living do so. In describing the life of the dead, he points out how like a living death so much of our actual life is, and by extension makes a plea to us to do something about it. His characters are trapped by their habits - his 'dead' protagonist, the appalling Lily Bloom, by nostalgia, regret, bitterness and envy; Lily's daughters Charlotte and Natasha by acquisitiveness and heroin addiction respectively. Lily is an appalling old bat, but Self treats her with humorous respect, and I, for one, found myself liking her. Ditto the cynical, exploitative, but vulnerable Natasha (Charlotte is another thing entirely - I think it's obvious where her creator's sympathies lay there...)
And it's a very funny book. New Age notions of shamanistic wisdom get a proper going-over, and the attitudes to death of most world religions are fairly effectively, even subtly, apostrophised. I fear I may have become a born-again Will Self fan.
My next review in these parts will probably deal with the downside of white, middle-class, male British English novelwriting in the late 20th/early 21st century. And I will name names.
I think that the self-conscious cleverness, and wearing of one's intellect on the sleeve of one's artfully-crumpled jacket is, for male novelists of my generation at least, something of a neurotic tic, born perhaps of the rise and fall of grammar school education within a short couple of decades. The concomitant insecurity resultant on a tension between the continued contempt of a moneyed elite towards interlopers on their Oxbridge privileges, and the total incomprehension of the unlettered celebrity culture towards any form of intellectual exertion, has left the middle-class bright white literary boy (women and ethnic minority writers still have something to prove to their own peers and a media hungry for novelty, however unjustified that concept might be) with a great deal of anxiety. He feels he has to impress, and resorts to those techniques which got him recognised at school - puns, seemingly casual scholarship, outrageous attitudes - particularly toward sensitive areas such as race and sex. Will Self has the added burden of having deliberately placed himself in the line of descent of two deceased greats of the previous generation, Anthony Burgess and JG Ballard - both social outsiders in a way that no member of the North London middle-classes could ever be. He has a lot to prove.
And now I admit that, for all its - and its author's - faults, I loved this novel. Like I say, the flashes of brilliance, in both perspicacity and style, more than compensated for the rather leaden filler passages full of sixth-form wordplay and nudge-nudge-wink-wink intellectual reference. It is a story not so much about How the Dead Live - although a recent radio talk by the author has cast some light on what he means by this, and also by one of the notions in this book that it's possible for the dead to become 'deader' - but rather about how the living do so. In describing the life of the dead, he points out how like a living death so much of our actual life is, and by extension makes a plea to us to do something about it. His characters are trapped by their habits - his 'dead' protagonist, the appalling Lily Bloom, by nostalgia, regret, bitterness and envy; Lily's daughters Charlotte and Natasha by acquisitiveness and heroin addiction respectively. Lily is an appalling old bat, but Self treats her with humorous respect, and I, for one, found myself liking her. Ditto the cynical, exploitative, but vulnerable Natasha (Charlotte is another thing entirely - I think it's obvious where her creator's sympathies lay there...)
And it's a very funny book. New Age notions of shamanistic wisdom get a proper going-over, and the attitudes to death of most world religions are fairly effectively, even subtly, apostrophised. I fear I may have become a born-again Will Self fan.
My next review in these parts will probably deal with the downside of white, middle-class, male British English novelwriting in the late 20th/early 21st century. And I will name names.
October 6, 2017
'Grant me the stupidity to deny there's anything I cannot change, the temerity to neglect the things I can, and the ignorance to be incapable of distinguishing between the two''
''How the Dead Live'' is narrated by Lily Bloom, an American lying in a hospital in London, dying of cancer. Mind you, narration is probably putting it rather mildly because as she describes her lonely, isolated life in London with a philandering husband and two daughters,now grown up, one of whom Natasha is a drug addict with designs on her mother's prescription drugs; and on the cancer that is slowly eating her up it reads more like a sermon given by some Evangelist preacher.
Roughly a third of the way through the novel Lily finally succumbs to the cancer and dies from then on she takes the reader on a tour of the afterlife. Self's vision of the afterlife in London does not seem to differ greatly from real life. The dead take jobs and deal with petty bureaucrats and bureaucracy, housed in sub-standard accommodation before being moved out of the city to some even duller commuter town. An afterlife where the dead still eat, drink and smoke out of habit rather than any need of sustenance.
This seems both a somewhat disquieting but also amusing look on life, and of course death. In particular I loved the 12-step programme and the 12 traditions for the ''Personally Dead'' but was repulsed by the thought of having to spend the afterlife living with moving, talking lumps of fat gained and lost throughout life.
For me, the early part of the book feels like a long winded lead up to a joke out; where the punch line is death and there is a real lack of characterisation despite Lily revealing a glimpse of her early life in America. I also found some of the imagery used both repetitive and at times pointless. It was if Self had been given a list of words by his editor and had been told that he had to use them all at some point or other otherwise the book would not be published. It had the effect of making the text turgid rather than flowing but then perhaps that was the whole idea and I just missed it. On the flip side I wouldn't say that I totally dislike it. At times I found it intriguing and compelling but I didn't enjoy half as much as The Book of Dave, the previous Will Self book that I have read. Like that book this seems to be a back-handed swipe at organised religion and beliefs but this one fails to really hit the mark.
''How the Dead Live'' is narrated by Lily Bloom, an American lying in a hospital in London, dying of cancer. Mind you, narration is probably putting it rather mildly because as she describes her lonely, isolated life in London with a philandering husband and two daughters,now grown up, one of whom Natasha is a drug addict with designs on her mother's prescription drugs; and on the cancer that is slowly eating her up it reads more like a sermon given by some Evangelist preacher.
Roughly a third of the way through the novel Lily finally succumbs to the cancer and dies from then on she takes the reader on a tour of the afterlife. Self's vision of the afterlife in London does not seem to differ greatly from real life. The dead take jobs and deal with petty bureaucrats and bureaucracy, housed in sub-standard accommodation before being moved out of the city to some even duller commuter town. An afterlife where the dead still eat, drink and smoke out of habit rather than any need of sustenance.
This seems both a somewhat disquieting but also amusing look on life, and of course death. In particular I loved the 12-step programme and the 12 traditions for the ''Personally Dead'' but was repulsed by the thought of having to spend the afterlife living with moving, talking lumps of fat gained and lost throughout life.
For me, the early part of the book feels like a long winded lead up to a joke out; where the punch line is death and there is a real lack of characterisation despite Lily revealing a glimpse of her early life in America. I also found some of the imagery used both repetitive and at times pointless. It was if Self had been given a list of words by his editor and had been told that he had to use them all at some point or other otherwise the book would not be published. It had the effect of making the text turgid rather than flowing but then perhaps that was the whole idea and I just missed it. On the flip side I wouldn't say that I totally dislike it. At times I found it intriguing and compelling but I didn't enjoy half as much as The Book of Dave, the previous Will Self book that I have read. Like that book this seems to be a back-handed swipe at organised religion and beliefs but this one fails to really hit the mark.
November 6, 2023
I just didn’t enjoy this.
Will Self is a notoriously intelligent man with a vast vocabulary. This book is basically that, without plot. And it’s very boring.
Sure there are times that I enjoyed the writing, and those times are when Self kept it succinct. He has a tendency to waffle and ramble and by the time he’s come back to what he was saying it’s buried under a thesaurus worth of words and one or two clever turns of phrase.
Is there any point to that? No, not at all. I’m reminded of when I read Infinite Jest, which does touch on quite a few of the same themes. That’s a book that is overlong, bloated and overstuffed, but much more entertaining, and where everything written is done with a clear purpose, even if that purpose is to annoy and confuse you.
Will Self writes as if he is not intending you to be able to understand what he’s writing, like he wants to watch pseudo-intellectuals scrabble around an Oxford bar trying to decipher the subtext and context of each paragraph.
I read that Self is a big fan of Martin Amis, and I could certainly see the similarities with his work, although I’ve only read Money. Unfortunately all the aspects of Money that I disliked, mainly Amis showing off and rambling incessantly, were all the bits of this book that I didn’t like.
Someone once said that you should avoid Will Self’s novels and read his short stories, and I tend to agree in principle. I have an unread book of Will Self short stories, and I am actually rather looking forward to reading this. Based on this book, I can see why his short form would be better: he has to get to the point. He will bring it home sooner. This book reads as though he was desperate to hit a word count and so created too many unwieldy tangents.
There are I’m sure, many people who love this, and by all means I’m very happy for you. I really didn’t.
Will Self is a notoriously intelligent man with a vast vocabulary. This book is basically that, without plot. And it’s very boring.
Sure there are times that I enjoyed the writing, and those times are when Self kept it succinct. He has a tendency to waffle and ramble and by the time he’s come back to what he was saying it’s buried under a thesaurus worth of words and one or two clever turns of phrase.
Is there any point to that? No, not at all. I’m reminded of when I read Infinite Jest, which does touch on quite a few of the same themes. That’s a book that is overlong, bloated and overstuffed, but much more entertaining, and where everything written is done with a clear purpose, even if that purpose is to annoy and confuse you.
Will Self writes as if he is not intending you to be able to understand what he’s writing, like he wants to watch pseudo-intellectuals scrabble around an Oxford bar trying to decipher the subtext and context of each paragraph.
I read that Self is a big fan of Martin Amis, and I could certainly see the similarities with his work, although I’ve only read Money. Unfortunately all the aspects of Money that I disliked, mainly Amis showing off and rambling incessantly, were all the bits of this book that I didn’t like.
Someone once said that you should avoid Will Self’s novels and read his short stories, and I tend to agree in principle. I have an unread book of Will Self short stories, and I am actually rather looking forward to reading this. Based on this book, I can see why his short form would be better: he has to get to the point. He will bring it home sooner. This book reads as though he was desperate to hit a word count and so created too many unwieldy tangents.
There are I’m sure, many people who love this, and by all means I’m very happy for you. I really didn’t.
March 9, 2025
Will Self explored a very strange notion on his literary debut in The Quantity Theory of Insanity. His short story The North London Book of the Dead postulates that when we die we don’t go to heaven or anything like that. Instead we move to a new life in a new address in a more anonymous suburb than we came from.
In How the Dead Live Self demonstrates that stories too can be recycled and brought back to life, by this time Self was no longer a literary unknown but a successful, feted novelist revisiting a brilliant idea.
In the interim the story has become as bloated as its new protagonist Lily Bloom, running to 402 rather than 16 pages. What was an arresting, disturbing idea has become a flatulent sprawl.
Yet this was a popular book, much praised by the literary lickspittles who are more noted by their ability to fawn upon each other rather than through any insights into a writer’s merits. It is hard to understand why. Yes it is weirdly imaginative, and Self, as ever, writes really well. The first section in particular dealing with Lily's illness and death is quite brilliant and will haunt me for a long time. Self is simultaneously funny and truly horrifying and possesses extraordinary powers of imagination. What seems to be missing is an editor who was not working from a kneeling position. This book is so obviously in need of a hard trim and surely, a team less easily impressed by his celebrity would have insisted on one and thus transformed something that was good but a bit of a slog into a memorable work. As it is I preferred the version that ran to 16 pages. This is an example of a writer being badly let down by his team.
In How the Dead Live Self demonstrates that stories too can be recycled and brought back to life, by this time Self was no longer a literary unknown but a successful, feted novelist revisiting a brilliant idea.
In the interim the story has become as bloated as its new protagonist Lily Bloom, running to 402 rather than 16 pages. What was an arresting, disturbing idea has become a flatulent sprawl.
Yet this was a popular book, much praised by the literary lickspittles who are more noted by their ability to fawn upon each other rather than through any insights into a writer’s merits. It is hard to understand why. Yes it is weirdly imaginative, and Self, as ever, writes really well. The first section in particular dealing with Lily's illness and death is quite brilliant and will haunt me for a long time. Self is simultaneously funny and truly horrifying and possesses extraordinary powers of imagination. What seems to be missing is an editor who was not working from a kneeling position. This book is so obviously in need of a hard trim and surely, a team less easily impressed by his celebrity would have insisted on one and thus transformed something that was good but a bit of a slog into a memorable work. As it is I preferred the version that ran to 16 pages. This is an example of a writer being badly let down by his team.
August 10, 2016
Will Self writes great stories. "the book of Dave" is one of my favourite books ever. "How the dead live" is a great story too, detailing the afterlife of one Lilly Bloom, who dies of cancer in her sixties, and continues to eke out an existence in a half hidden, mysterious London Borough. The problem with Will Self is that he gets a bit tough to read with all his clever wordplay, long words and allusions to this, that and the other, so it can be a bit tiring trying to keep up with him. There are a few rewards if you persevere though, and if you read on a kindle, it's easy to look stuff up. I looked up HeLa and was surprised to discover that he hadn't made it up. He had fabricated the idea that it can be used as a wall covering though.
The book is an interesting, if difficult journey with some dark comedy and fascinating ideas. It doesn't actually take you anywhere though. I think that I would rather die than live in line Lilly Bloom.
The book is an interesting, if difficult journey with some dark comedy and fascinating ideas. It doesn't actually take you anywhere though. I think that I would rather die than live in line Lilly Bloom.
August 11, 2011
Wow! I had never read Will Self before and this was certainly a mammoth of an induction! This book should come with a warning - "Not for the faint hearted". There are some gruesome concepts to grapple with and some very direct language, which won't be to everyone's taste, but I found I liked the bravery of this novel and the creativity blew me away. I'd been getting slightly bored with some of the predictable plots and writing of the books I've been reading recently, but this one kept me on my toes all the way through. My criticisms are that, although it was a dance of a story, I wasn't sure whether there was a meaning or a purpose to it all, and the ending left me confused. But I know that I will definitely be reading Will Self again. He's a challenge and not afraid to be different, and I like that!
April 22, 2022
Actual rating 1.75 stars
I had to read this novel for a 20th century British Lit course, and I was thoroughly confused. I *think* I get what Self was trying to do here, but the execution was off for me. The book is probably 50-100 pages too long; there are just pages upon pages of fruitless narration.
The italicized Christmas 2001 sections were pointless, I felt, up until the actual last page, where we discover who was narrating and what that means. I felt lost throughout all these passages, and had no clue what was going on. Yes, thats the point of fiction sometimes, but usually there are hints or foreshadowing or even red herrings as to what’s going on. But there was nothing. I think Self could have done a better job at making those sections more understandable to the reader sooner on.
I had to read this novel for a 20th century British Lit course, and I was thoroughly confused. I *think* I get what Self was trying to do here, but the execution was off for me. The book is probably 50-100 pages too long; there are just pages upon pages of fruitless narration.
The italicized Christmas 2001 sections were pointless, I felt, up until the actual last page, where we discover who was narrating and what that means. I felt lost throughout all these passages, and had no clue what was going on. Yes, thats the point of fiction sometimes, but usually there are hints or foreshadowing or even red herrings as to what’s going on. But there was nothing. I think Self could have done a better job at making those sections more understandable to the reader sooner on.
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