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Alive in Necropolis
A fresh, imaginative debut novel about a young police officer in northern California struggling to keep the peace—and maintain a grip on reality—in a town where the dead outnumber the living.
Colma, California, is the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living. The longtime cemetery for San Francisco, it is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and aviation pioneer Lincoln Beachey. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a rookie cop trying to go by the book as he struggles to navigate a new realm of grownup relationships—including a shaky romance with an older woman; a growing alliance with his cocky, charismatic partner, Nick Toronto; fading college friendships; and an aching sense of responsibility for a local rich kid who Mercer rescues from a dangerous prank in the cemetery.
But instead of settling comfortably into adult life, Mercer becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor in the police unit, Sergeant Featherstone, who seems to have become confused about whether he was policing the living or the dead. And as Mercer delves deeper into Featherstone’s story, it appears that Mercer’s own sanity is beginning to slip—either that, or Colma’s more famous residents are not resting in peace as they should be.
With all the playful sensitivity of Haruki Murakami and the haunted atmosphere of Paul Auster, but with a voice all his own, Doug Dorst has crafted an irresistible, compelling debut.
Colma, California, is the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living. The longtime cemetery for San Francisco, it is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and aviation pioneer Lincoln Beachey. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a rookie cop trying to go by the book as he struggles to navigate a new realm of grownup relationships—including a shaky romance with an older woman; a growing alliance with his cocky, charismatic partner, Nick Toronto; fading college friendships; and an aching sense of responsibility for a local rich kid who Mercer rescues from a dangerous prank in the cemetery.
But instead of settling comfortably into adult life, Mercer becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor in the police unit, Sergeant Featherstone, who seems to have become confused about whether he was policing the living or the dead. And as Mercer delves deeper into Featherstone’s story, it appears that Mercer’s own sanity is beginning to slip—either that, or Colma’s more famous residents are not resting in peace as they should be.
With all the playful sensitivity of Haruki Murakami and the haunted atmosphere of Paul Auster, but with a voice all his own, Doug Dorst has crafted an irresistible, compelling debut.
437 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 238 reviews
July 11, 2009
Worst book I've read this year, thus far. It is so terrible. It must have been its setting that made it this year's OneCity OneBook choice, because otherwise I can't imagine why anyone would be encouraged to read it. Yes, it got good reviews, and yes, it was a "runner-up for" the 2009 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award--these facts flabbergast me. Now I have to read this year's winner, at least to understand what goes on at the Hemingway Foundation.
This book is so terrible I will not be able to catalog all of its awfulness, but I hope to at least cover the most egregious offenses. Of course the most egregious offense is that it ever gotwritten published, it is too late to correct that error.
Where to begin. Half the whole book, at least, is telling. Telling and telling and telling, providing so many unnecessary details that leave almost no room for the actual "mystery." I put that in quotes because, with one exception, none of the mysteries is solved, or explained in any way. IN ANY WAY. Why include so many details about a mystery if you are not going to provide even a single clue as to the solution?
To wit: We never learn: Why the ghosts remain Earth; why they do not want to eat the "Root" that makes them disappear (or to quote the novel, "die"); why the bad ghosts like to force the other ghosts to eat the Root; why Our Hero Mercer can see them; how it is possible for Our Corporeal Hero to physically harm ghosts; &c. &c. forever. I don't need a specific answer to every question, but the novel is written so that the mystery is completely inexplicable.
That is crux of this idiotic plot, then: It is built around a mystery that the reader cannot explicate.
It has further flaws, however. I counted at least five plots separate from the "main" story, all of which are technically connected in that they are all in this novel and different plots' characters at some points interact, but most of them have no business being in the novel at all. Why follow the junkie teens down to Mexico for two days? Why give Mrs. Featherstone a gambling problem? Why get so involved in the tragedy of Toronto and the acrobat, and his recovery through zazen? How does Fiona's post-cat-death freak out and subsequent car crash relate to Our Hero's Personal Growth Narrative, when it happens three chapters from the end of the book? Did the inclusion of Rev. Whipple contribute anything useful to Our Hero's Personal Growth Narrative? Did the friends need to find an old gravestone in Owen's yard and then mention it 20 times in four total pages? Why bother telling us anything about any of the ghosts' histories in the prologue, if they were never addressed, even obliquely, in the actual book?
OH AND: That "lead-lined safe" from whatever cult-style church in West Virginia? That's a big gun that never went off, Doug Dorst. Don't think I forgot about it.
The technical details are strange, too. He did lots of research with the Colma PD, and includes a quite a few pages styled as (difficult-to-read) official police reports. About medicine, though, it's like he just Wikipediaed "back surgery" or something and made the rest up from what he learned on TV. I mean, that silly scene at the end with Fiona and the huge guy, who hasn't reacted properly to "a sedative"? WTF "a sedative"? It's so lazy, and irksome, considering how descriptive he gets with so many things that do not need description.
I like stories set in places I know; admittedly, it's a nice ego-stroke to recognize the block or bar or statue that the author uses; you get to see a familiar place through strange eyes, and that's pretty all right too. Setting this novel from Colma to San Francisco unfortunately made it even worse. The man just can't name a street or a block or a neighborhood without adding a bunch of useless details--more goddamn TELLING--about it, so every location is like him yelling, "See! I know this place! I've been here I know it! I'm totally a local I lived here I know it I do!!" This becomes unbearable very quickly. It also makes it very clear that he used to live in the Haight, and that maybe he didn't take Muni so often because everyone is driving everywhere, even three blocks, which is just moronic.
Doug Dorst, I get it. I understand that you know San Francisco, or at least some of it; I understand that you find Colma fascinating; I get that you were trying to draw parallels: between Our Hero Mercer & his father and Sgt. Featherstone in his reports; between Our Hero & Jude and Jude and his father; between Mercer & his father and Jude & his father; and blah blah blah. You tried, Doug Dorst, but you did a VERY BAD JOB. Heroes episodes make more sense than your plot and Heroes, Doug Dorst, is particularly talented at introducing and then forgetting new characters; wasting episode after episode on dead-end storylines; for receiving a lot of praise that I'm not sure it ever deserved, because it was always unfocused, jumbled, aggravatingly repetitive. That is Alive in Necropolis. I am very, very sorry to have read it.
This book is so terrible I will not be able to catalog all of its awfulness, but I hope to at least cover the most egregious offenses. Of course the most egregious offense is that it ever got
Where to begin. Half the whole book, at least, is telling. Telling and telling and telling, providing so many unnecessary details that leave almost no room for the actual "mystery." I put that in quotes because, with one exception, none of the mysteries is solved, or explained in any way. IN ANY WAY. Why include so many details about a mystery if you are not going to provide even a single clue as to the solution?
To wit: We never learn: Why the ghosts remain Earth; why they do not want to eat the "Root" that makes them disappear (or to quote the novel, "die"); why the bad ghosts like to force the other ghosts to eat the Root; why Our Hero Mercer can see them; how it is possible for Our Corporeal Hero to physically harm ghosts; &c. &c. forever. I don't need a specific answer to every question, but the novel is written so that the mystery is completely inexplicable.
That is crux of this idiotic plot, then: It is built around a mystery that the reader cannot explicate.
It has further flaws, however. I counted at least five plots separate from the "main" story, all of which are technically connected in that they are all in this novel and different plots' characters at some points interact, but most of them have no business being in the novel at all. Why follow the junkie teens down to Mexico for two days? Why give Mrs. Featherstone a gambling problem? Why get so involved in the tragedy of Toronto and the acrobat, and his recovery through zazen? How does Fiona's post-cat-death freak out and subsequent car crash relate to Our Hero's Personal Growth Narrative, when it happens three chapters from the end of the book? Did the inclusion of Rev. Whipple contribute anything useful to Our Hero's Personal Growth Narrative? Did the friends need to find an old gravestone in Owen's yard and then mention it 20 times in four total pages? Why bother telling us anything about any of the ghosts' histories in the prologue, if they were never addressed, even obliquely, in the actual book?
OH AND: That "lead-lined safe" from whatever cult-style church in West Virginia? That's a big gun that never went off, Doug Dorst. Don't think I forgot about it.
The technical details are strange, too. He did lots of research with the Colma PD, and includes a quite a few pages styled as (difficult-to-read) official police reports. About medicine, though, it's like he just Wikipediaed "back surgery" or something and made the rest up from what he learned on TV. I mean, that silly scene at the end with Fiona and the huge guy, who hasn't reacted properly to "a sedative"? WTF "a sedative"? It's so lazy, and irksome, considering how descriptive he gets with so many things that do not need description.
I like stories set in places I know; admittedly, it's a nice ego-stroke to recognize the block or bar or statue that the author uses; you get to see a familiar place through strange eyes, and that's pretty all right too. Setting this novel from Colma to San Francisco unfortunately made it even worse. The man just can't name a street or a block or a neighborhood without adding a bunch of useless details--more goddamn TELLING--about it, so every location is like him yelling, "See! I know this place! I've been here I know it! I'm totally a local I lived here I know it I do!!" This becomes unbearable very quickly. It also makes it very clear that he used to live in the Haight, and that maybe he didn't take Muni so often because everyone is driving everywhere, even three blocks, which is just moronic.
Doug Dorst, I get it. I understand that you know San Francisco, or at least some of it; I understand that you find Colma fascinating; I get that you were trying to draw parallels: between Our Hero Mercer & his father and Sgt. Featherstone in his reports; between Our Hero & Jude and Jude and his father; between Mercer & his father and Jude & his father; and blah blah blah. You tried, Doug Dorst, but you did a VERY BAD JOB. Heroes episodes make more sense than your plot and Heroes, Doug Dorst, is particularly talented at introducing and then forgetting new characters; wasting episode after episode on dead-end storylines; for receiving a lot of praise that I'm not sure it ever deserved, because it was always unfocused, jumbled, aggravatingly repetitive. That is Alive in Necropolis. I am very, very sorry to have read it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2009
It's not a horrible book, but it lacks focus.
The ghosts issue that is the hook for the story feels weak in my opinion. Better is the telling of the stories of the three main male characters as they try and find love/happiness within their lives. The intertwining of the narratives is enjoyable and interesting, the differences between the different characters makes the reading very enjoyable.
The ghosts seems like it was the hook to get an editor to read the book, but it feels more like an afterthought to me. A nice book that embodies modern fiction of telling more than one slice-of-life story of ordinary people trying to deal with their own lives.
The main narratives are told in the current voice (he thinks, she says) and early going it's a little jarring because other parts of the narrative are told in the more common past tenses (he said, she walked). But once the main story line starts to get under way it settles on present voice and really rolls along.
The ghosts issue that is the hook for the story feels weak in my opinion. Better is the telling of the stories of the three main male characters as they try and find love/happiness within their lives. The intertwining of the narratives is enjoyable and interesting, the differences between the different characters makes the reading very enjoyable.
The ghosts seems like it was the hook to get an editor to read the book, but it feels more like an afterthought to me. A nice book that embodies modern fiction of telling more than one slice-of-life story of ordinary people trying to deal with their own lives.
The main narratives are told in the current voice (he thinks, she says) and early going it's a little jarring because other parts of the narrative are told in the more common past tenses (he said, she walked). But once the main story line starts to get under way it settles on present voice and really rolls along.
April 7, 2011
Best book I've read all summer. In a glut of first-person logorrhea that seems to be outright choking the fiction shelves these days it’s pleasurably bracing to read a new book written completely in the third-person. Written well, mind you. And aside from the author’s talent, there’s plenty else in this one to savor: a town of cemeteries (Colma), the ramshackle pack of cops that patrol said town, an old-timey gang of murderous ghosts, a nurse with a drinking problem, the rich son of a pretentious movie director that will do whatever to himself in order to win the love of a girl, a widow with a gambling problem and a penchant for televangelists, and plenty of narrative drive to sustain all of it. Etcetera. Really good stuff.
August 24, 2008
Firstly, I love the title of this book. Isn't it wonderful? Sonorous, contradictory, engaging, mystifying; it has an excellent mouthfeel. I think the title alone was enough to convince my mother to buy this book in hardcover (admittedly, after a bout of serious cajoling on my part), and my nefarious plan unfolded precisely: she bought the book, and finished it just in time for my arrival in California (yes, I am sitting here tapping my steepled fingers together and cackling).
Even one hundred pages in, I wasn't quite sure how much I liked Alive in Necropolis, despite its mesmerizing title. I couldn't escape the sense that I was waiting for the book to start, and I kept thinking that I had read far fewer pages than I actually had. My feeling about said phenomenon is that it stemmed from an overly plot-focused/multiple narrative strands and voices beginning, and as a reader, I was expecting these plot points and narrative strands to speed up and come together in a more dramatic way. I'm not sure why I stopped caring about or needing that to happen. But let me try to unravel it a bit...
See, the aspect that I like best about this novel is exactly what I think derailed me at first. That is, its required suspension of disbelief, or put another way, its more "conceptual" or "speculative" elements. Confused thinking alert! Sorry. More clearly: Doug Dorst takes a big risk here by treating the ghost story in the novel with a very matter of fact pen. At first, I wanted to know more about its component parts--what exactly "Root" is, if all cemeteries in the book's diegesis, so to speak, are like the ones in Colma, why certain people reappear as their younger selves while others are fixed as their selves at the moment of death, why Mike is able to see these ghosts, and so forth. I think I had my serious sci-fi glasses on. I took them off. I had to come to terms with the book AIN is, not the book I thought it should be or expected it to be.
Fuck it, I thought, Doug Dorst isn't preoccupied with these details, why should I be? And I fully believe that his casual touch with the Colma ghost world is far more effective than any attempts to explain its operations would have been. I mean, there aren't any explanations to strain our credulity, right? The narrator feels solid, grounded, like an accurate and trustworthy observer, so there's no reason not to trust, to not just... go with it.
And the funny thing? This trustworthiness? The one that enables me to accept Colma's society of the no-longer-with-us? It stems from Dorst's unerring, humane characterizations, his psychological realism that is so bang-on it's a bit startling. I mean, Mike treats Fiona abhorrently, but as a reader (and a sometime asshole)--despite my empathy for Fiona--I felt sympathy for Mike, because his bullshit thought process, as sketched by Dorst, is so, so, perfectly on the mark. True, I might be a little biased by the whole David Brooks Odyssey years thing that seems to be afflicting Mike (as a one month away from thirty club member myself), but I am, I was, struck by Dorst's agility at lighting the shadier realms of his characters' interior landscapes.
In some ways, this novel reminded me of the frankly unreadable Beautiful Children in both its mood and some of its techniques: the slight air of detachment, the shifting narrative perspectives, the tribes of disaffected teenagers, but Alive in Necropolis succeeds where BC fails, because it has a core of real human longing and not just an absent center. AIN isn't a showy novel, despite its premise, but it is totally solid and full and good--like, morally, for real--even when some of its more flighty and ephemeral subjects are not.
May 31, 2011
There might be a good story in Doug Dorst’s Alive in Necropolis, but I don’t have any more patience to get to it.
The novel starts out with a suspenseful first chapter, as police officer Mike Mercer investigates a suspicious scene at a local cemetery. Unfortunately, the story crawls from there, as the next 200-something pages deal with Mercer’s relationships with an older lover, Fiona, his cop cliché partner, Nick Toronto, and the elderly woman who moved into his apartment complex, Lorna Featherstone. Lorna’s husband, Sergeant Wes Featherstone, appeared to have gone crazy before his death; keeping reports on policing the dead in Colma, CA, where there are 1,200 living residents for the two million dead and (sorta) buried. With an unaware Mercer seemingly about to follow in Featherstone’s footsteps, I was looking forward to a gunslinger ghost story, but at the 60% mark, very little of that story had shown up. The ghost characters state their belief that Mercer will come to help police the gang tormenting the dead, but the novel doesn’t get there quick enough. It wasn't there when I quit, and all the indicators that pointed to it coming made me think the 'crossing over' event should've occurred at least 150 pages earlier.
While many readers were pleased that the fantastical side of Alive in Necropolis was a minor aspect—making the novel more about everyday relationships—to me, holding off on that part is like an act one loaded gun going off too late. If Dorst wanted to write about the complexities of human relationships (or at least try), he should have ditched the fantastical element entirely, or made the ghost story prominent enough to have a compare/contrast between the relationships of the living and the dead, but Dorst fires wide on all counts. Take, for example, that several characters are introduced throughout the book and all of them have great sex with their respective partners. A character’s sex life—along with anything else: how they drive, play poker, talk—should say something about their character, or the state of their relationship, so for Dorst to homogenize the lot into the land of great sex reeks of author indulgence. Plus there’s that annoying feeling that the main character will end up sleeping with several of the women in the book—be it best friend’s girl or stumble-upon acquaintance—despite being initially written as a luckless with the ladies type. Dorst does have a solid style, but from the second chapter on, an interesting story is swapped out for stuff that just happens. I should have accepted the death knell when I left Alive in Necropolis out of my vacation bag, but a brief return to the story confirmed my boredom and I called it quits. One star.
The novel starts out with a suspenseful first chapter, as police officer Mike Mercer investigates a suspicious scene at a local cemetery. Unfortunately, the story crawls from there, as the next 200-something pages deal with Mercer’s relationships with an older lover, Fiona, his cop cliché partner, Nick Toronto, and the elderly woman who moved into his apartment complex, Lorna Featherstone. Lorna’s husband, Sergeant Wes Featherstone, appeared to have gone crazy before his death; keeping reports on policing the dead in Colma, CA, where there are 1,200 living residents for the two million dead and (sorta) buried. With an unaware Mercer seemingly about to follow in Featherstone’s footsteps, I was looking forward to a gunslinger ghost story, but at the 60% mark, very little of that story had shown up. The ghost characters state their belief that Mercer will come to help police the gang tormenting the dead, but the novel doesn’t get there quick enough. It wasn't there when I quit, and all the indicators that pointed to it coming made me think the 'crossing over' event should've occurred at least 150 pages earlier.
While many readers were pleased that the fantastical side of Alive in Necropolis was a minor aspect—making the novel more about everyday relationships—to me, holding off on that part is like an act one loaded gun going off too late. If Dorst wanted to write about the complexities of human relationships (or at least try), he should have ditched the fantastical element entirely, or made the ghost story prominent enough to have a compare/contrast between the relationships of the living and the dead, but Dorst fires wide on all counts. Take, for example, that several characters are introduced throughout the book and all of them have great sex with their respective partners. A character’s sex life—along with anything else: how they drive, play poker, talk—should say something about their character, or the state of their relationship, so for Dorst to homogenize the lot into the land of great sex reeks of author indulgence. Plus there’s that annoying feeling that the main character will end up sleeping with several of the women in the book—be it best friend’s girl or stumble-upon acquaintance—despite being initially written as a luckless with the ladies type. Dorst does have a solid style, but from the second chapter on, an interesting story is swapped out for stuff that just happens. I should have accepted the death knell when I left Alive in Necropolis out of my vacation bag, but a brief return to the story confirmed my boredom and I called it quits. One star.
May 25, 2010
Ugh. Two stars is generous.
Look, if you want to write a boring book about the social/romantic life of a nondescript policeman and a few of the equally uninteresting people in his orbit, go right ahead. That is your right as an American and as a mediocre novelist. But why disguise it as a supernatural mystery about a city full of ghosts, especially if you're going to avoid the subject of ghosts for pretty much hundreds of pages at a time? That's both annoying and dishonest, and it just doesn't make sense, especially when one of the major characters is revealed (or rather is not revealed) to have LITERALLY NO REASON FOR BEING IN THE STORY. Add some overly porn-y sex scenes--did I mention that much of the book's conflict resides in the male characters' burning desire to fuck really hot chicks?--and an annoying shortcut technique of using "police reports" to handle most of the ghost-related exposition and action, and you've got a book that was not worth my time.
I liked the prologue. I like the title. That's all the praise I can muster.
Look, if you want to write a boring book about the social/romantic life of a nondescript policeman and a few of the equally uninteresting people in his orbit, go right ahead. That is your right as an American and as a mediocre novelist. But why disguise it as a supernatural mystery about a city full of ghosts, especially if you're going to avoid the subject of ghosts for pretty much hundreds of pages at a time? That's both annoying and dishonest, and it just doesn't make sense, especially when one of the major characters is revealed (or rather is not revealed) to have LITERALLY NO REASON FOR BEING IN THE STORY. Add some overly porn-y sex scenes--did I mention that much of the book's conflict resides in the male characters' burning desire to fuck really hot chicks?--and an annoying shortcut technique of using "police reports" to handle most of the ghost-related exposition and action, and you've got a book that was not worth my time.
I liked the prologue. I like the title. That's all the praise I can muster.
August 14, 2008
This book was billed as part police procedural, part ghost story. Michael Mercer is a rookie cop in Colma, California, a city that has so many cemeteries that the dead outnumber the living by thousands to one. I want to say that I think the author shows definite potential with this book. Unfortunately it fails on a few levels. Too much time was spent overdeveloping minor characters at the expense of plot and pacing. Although the ghost characters appeared throughout, Michael’s interaction with them started way too late in the book. I was also not fond of the ending. Although the different story threads were successfully tied off, I was personally disappointed with all of the results. On the good side (and there is one), when the story concentrated on Michael and his job or his relationships with his friends and coworkers, it was engrossing and entertaining. And the author shows a real talent for character development and creating interesting backstories for them.
August 2, 2009
Just finished this book. Overall, it was pretty good - it's been a while since I read a work of fiction that I was this wrapped up in - but there were several things I just didn't really like about it.
The ending. Meh.
The police reports. Ugh! Tedious to read. And the climactic moment of the story is only described in police report. Totally not satisfying.
Generally, too many bad things happened to too many good people. Very annoying.
However, very creative concept and LOTS of literary love for the Bay Area, San Francisco especially.
The ending. Meh.
The police reports. Ugh! Tedious to read. And the climactic moment of the story is only described in police report. Totally not satisfying.
Generally, too many bad things happened to too many good people. Very annoying.
However, very creative concept and LOTS of literary love for the Bay Area, San Francisco especially.
October 23, 2009
By page 248, I gave up. I had been told that this was a ghost story for people who don't like ghost stories. I like ghost stories. Dorst had created wonderful characters in the ghosts. Unfortunately, they were a fraction of the story, which centered on a young cop. If he'd been policing the living and the dead, like I'd hoped, he would have been much more interesting to me. Instead, I couldn't figure out the appeal he had for all the boring living people buzzing around him. If I'd met this guy at a party, I would have moved away from him. I considered giving up on the living and just skimming until I came to a part with the ghosts, but there are lots of ghost stories written for people who like ghosts. It's too bad. I couldn't have been more excited about a story set in Colma, city of 17 cemeteries.
December 3, 2016
I'm not exactly sure what Necropolis was trying to say. On another day, I would have forgiven its rambling plot, but not right now when I'm already struggling to finish perfectly readable books. And this wasn't one of those. It had way too many subplots and asides to form a coherent whole. More unfortunately, the subplots and asides were just not interesting. The characters were not people I wanted to spend time with, and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, in this particular book it was yet another detrimental factor.
Don't waste your time, there are better books. I got fooled by the supernatural - highly played up in the blurb, not all that present in the book itself. It is yet another subplot that gets little time and less explanation.
Don't waste your time, there are better books. I got fooled by the supernatural - highly played up in the blurb, not all that present in the book itself. It is yet another subplot that gets little time and less explanation.
February 16, 2009
I am an idiot...what was the point?
October 6, 2021
I enjoyed the tale of the young policeman and his relationships, including his relationship to his job. However, there are too many ghosts and too many drugs in this novel for me to fully enjoy it.
Back story: When I was 12, I watched 77 Sunset Strip as I often did, on the old TV, alone in the unfinished basement. In this episode, some men snatched Kookie from his parking attendant job, forced drugs into him, and left him non-functioning. I have had almost a phobia about illicit substances ever since.
And about licit substances: do lots of people really drink in the quantities often portrayed in books and movies?
Back story: When I was 12, I watched 77 Sunset Strip as I often did, on the old TV, alone in the unfinished basement. In this episode, some men snatched Kookie from his parking attendant job, forced drugs into him, and left him non-functioning. I have had almost a phobia about illicit substances ever since.
And about licit substances: do lots of people really drink in the quantities often portrayed in books and movies?
October 24, 2010
I bought this book at the end of April, having seen it on an end-of-the-semester book buying trip near campus. I wanted to stock up on summer reading material; Dorst’s book wanted to be bought. I could tell by the blue and yellow cover, the graphic-novel style cover art, and the fact that the word “Necropolis” was in the title, that this book wanted to be taken home and devoured. The back cover whispered something about ghosts and the Bay area, two of my favorite things, and I knew the deal was done. Book purchased, it sat on my shelf as I pushed through finals, final papers, wedding planning, and a trip back across the country to my home state. It sat there, not complaining, as I forgot why I’d picked it up in the first place.
I finally opened it last night. By the middle of the first chapter I was reading choice tidbits to my husband, laughing aloud, wanting more. Before I knew it, it was 3 am, I was on page 181, and I only had 4 hours until I was supposed to be getting in my car to go to work. The novel had sex, drugs, rookie cops, clever ghosts, and Emperor Norton. I gave in to sleep, brought the book to work with me, and snuck peaks in between patients, every chance I got. It’s just after 3pm now, and I set Necropolis aside a moment ago, finished. Spent.
All along the story had been like a ride on a daredevil’s biplane. We rose up together, lifting into the cold air, feeling the story rush past as freezing wind battered us a little off course but suddenly! A drop towards the earth, hurtling beautifully toward us. A mix of curiosity and death. The audience Ooooh‘d and Aaaahhhh‘d as we spun in the air, pulling out of the nosedive just in time, spiralling upward toward another plot-point. I braced myself for the final trick, the end of the book, the ultimate aerial amazement…
It never came. The story rose, found a solid-enough patch of air, and drifted off. The character who’d been shambling toward heroism for the bulk of the novel does his good deed without fanfare, and keeps stumbling and shuffling, right out of the story. Resolution is tacked on the end for good measure; every bit of the story has an ending, in fact, but it’s as if Dorst wants the reader to know that he didn’t forget anything. Didn’t leave anyone hanging. Except me, of course. The promised land of evolved characters never appears. No one, at the end of the book, is really any different than they were at the beginning. Even the amazing powers of dead-seeing and ghost-policing are forgotten over a few drinks and the mention of a new girl to replace the old ones. During the high-flying routines I hadn’t noticed how flat the characters were because they still had the potential to become real people. In a way the author didn’t intend, all of his characters are ghosts, even the live ones.
In the end I think, “He worked hard on that.” I can give Dorst that much. Necropolis is painstakingly written, almost self-referentially worried over, and frequently brilliant, up until it resolved itself with typed up reports instead of action.
In the end, Dorst only took about 12 hours of my life, and I admit that enjoyed the ride, right up until it stopped going anywhere.
*Previously posted on my book review site at: http://cuinnreviews.wordpress.com/
I finally opened it last night. By the middle of the first chapter I was reading choice tidbits to my husband, laughing aloud, wanting more. Before I knew it, it was 3 am, I was on page 181, and I only had 4 hours until I was supposed to be getting in my car to go to work. The novel had sex, drugs, rookie cops, clever ghosts, and Emperor Norton. I gave in to sleep, brought the book to work with me, and snuck peaks in between patients, every chance I got. It’s just after 3pm now, and I set Necropolis aside a moment ago, finished. Spent.
All along the story had been like a ride on a daredevil’s biplane. We rose up together, lifting into the cold air, feeling the story rush past as freezing wind battered us a little off course but suddenly! A drop towards the earth, hurtling beautifully toward us. A mix of curiosity and death. The audience Ooooh‘d and Aaaahhhh‘d as we spun in the air, pulling out of the nosedive just in time, spiralling upward toward another plot-point. I braced myself for the final trick, the end of the book, the ultimate aerial amazement…
It never came. The story rose, found a solid-enough patch of air, and drifted off. The character who’d been shambling toward heroism for the bulk of the novel does his good deed without fanfare, and keeps stumbling and shuffling, right out of the story. Resolution is tacked on the end for good measure; every bit of the story has an ending, in fact, but it’s as if Dorst wants the reader to know that he didn’t forget anything. Didn’t leave anyone hanging. Except me, of course. The promised land of evolved characters never appears. No one, at the end of the book, is really any different than they were at the beginning. Even the amazing powers of dead-seeing and ghost-policing are forgotten over a few drinks and the mention of a new girl to replace the old ones. During the high-flying routines I hadn’t noticed how flat the characters were because they still had the potential to become real people. In a way the author didn’t intend, all of his characters are ghosts, even the live ones.
In the end I think, “He worked hard on that.” I can give Dorst that much. Necropolis is painstakingly written, almost self-referentially worried over, and frequently brilliant, up until it resolved itself with typed up reports instead of action.
In the end, Dorst only took about 12 hours of my life, and I admit that enjoyed the ride, right up until it stopped going anywhere.
*Previously posted on my book review site at: http://cuinnreviews.wordpress.com/
January 26, 2013
I went to see Doug Dorst read when this book came out, got my copy in hardcover, had him autograph it, and reminded him of who I was—a former student from his days at Stanford. “Bruce,” he wrote, “Keep it up – Can’t wait to read more of your stuff!”
But then it took me a long time—could it be 3 years??—to finally crack this thing and read it. I had tried once, as I recall, but the hook didn’t get set. This time, however, no such problem. I was drawn in from the first scene.
I guess the short version is, Alive in Necropolis surprised me. For some reason, I was expecting something like a romp, with the living dead in some form or another appearing on nearly every page. But what I got instead was a multi-layered tale of love, longing, and belonging, set squarely in the very real modern world. That last one, belonging, is one of my favorite subjects in fiction, as it is for many of us who have struggled both to be a part of something larger than ourselves, and also to derive comfort instead of anxiety from that something when we find it. In Necropolis, the protagonist, Mike Mercer, thinks he finds that something in police work. As a member of the Colma Police Department, he is able to free himself from the wagging tail of his twenties by applying himself, as many young soldiers do, to something structured and demanding. He believes he has found himself, but finds to his growing consternation that love and meaning are also important, and in these arenas, he meets one failure after another. Against such forces, the structure and consistency of police work are no match, and Mike is forced in the end to look hard at himself, to be ruthless, to find and deal with the human connections—connections he had gotten into the habit of pushing away—that will truly give his life meaning.
Interestingly, while the dead are there in Necropolis, acting throughout the story as Mike’s antagonists and allies, their presence and the story within the story that they convey do little more than reinforce and complicate the real struggle, a struggle that could have and would have ensued with or without their presence. In the end, in fact, just as one is beginning to wonder whether they were ever there at all or just a figment of Mike’s imagination, the dead appear in a closing scene that seems designed to assert their presence and their role in the story—and, perhaps, their role in many other stories happening in and around Colma. A minor, minor character—one who has appeared only twice in the entire novel to that point—holds his girlfriend in his arms and waits for them. “He hopes they’re not bound for Boston,” Dorst writes, “because he likes having them here, and he can’t wait to share his discovery—his secret—with Mindy.”
Alive in Necropolis is a story of discovery, of love, of longing and belonging, but don’t shy away, because it’s also one hell of a lot of fun to read.
But then it took me a long time—could it be 3 years??—to finally crack this thing and read it. I had tried once, as I recall, but the hook didn’t get set. This time, however, no such problem. I was drawn in from the first scene.
I guess the short version is, Alive in Necropolis surprised me. For some reason, I was expecting something like a romp, with the living dead in some form or another appearing on nearly every page. But what I got instead was a multi-layered tale of love, longing, and belonging, set squarely in the very real modern world. That last one, belonging, is one of my favorite subjects in fiction, as it is for many of us who have struggled both to be a part of something larger than ourselves, and also to derive comfort instead of anxiety from that something when we find it. In Necropolis, the protagonist, Mike Mercer, thinks he finds that something in police work. As a member of the Colma Police Department, he is able to free himself from the wagging tail of his twenties by applying himself, as many young soldiers do, to something structured and demanding. He believes he has found himself, but finds to his growing consternation that love and meaning are also important, and in these arenas, he meets one failure after another. Against such forces, the structure and consistency of police work are no match, and Mike is forced in the end to look hard at himself, to be ruthless, to find and deal with the human connections—connections he had gotten into the habit of pushing away—that will truly give his life meaning.
Interestingly, while the dead are there in Necropolis, acting throughout the story as Mike’s antagonists and allies, their presence and the story within the story that they convey do little more than reinforce and complicate the real struggle, a struggle that could have and would have ensued with or without their presence. In the end, in fact, just as one is beginning to wonder whether they were ever there at all or just a figment of Mike’s imagination, the dead appear in a closing scene that seems designed to assert their presence and their role in the story—and, perhaps, their role in many other stories happening in and around Colma. A minor, minor character—one who has appeared only twice in the entire novel to that point—holds his girlfriend in his arms and waits for them. “He hopes they’re not bound for Boston,” Dorst writes, “because he likes having them here, and he can’t wait to share his discovery—his secret—with Mindy.”
Alive in Necropolis is a story of discovery, of love, of longing and belonging, but don’t shy away, because it’s also one hell of a lot of fun to read.
August 28, 2008
I was curious about this book when I read its dust jacket, wondering why it was classified in my store's Fiction/Lit section as opposed to Sci-Fi/Fantasy where the bulk of Urban Fantasy resides. I had my answer after completing my ride-along with Officer Michael Mercer, Dorst's focal character, and it had to do with the pacing and stylistic nature of the book. Ravenous urban fantasy readers seeking that next thrilling storyline might find this novel harder to speed through (we are riding shotgun with a by-the-book cop after all), and this novel does not feel designed to spawn a successive series of episodic chapters. The drama tends to be more living-centric, and the supernatural elements tend to inhabit the periphery, rather than being the source of tension. This elevated the novel for me, taking it from a leisurly respite to a text that actually forced my engagement. I would hesitate to label the novel as literary, but Dorst definitely samples from a more erudite pacing and plotting than typical urban fantasy writers.
December 15, 2008
There are more people dead than living in the Northern California city of Colma, a community centered almost entirely around cemeteries. (Where else are the people of nearby San Francisco going to bury their dead?) Rookie cop Mike Mercer has recently taken over a graveyard beat after his predecessor died, and just like the man he replaced, he soon starts hearing and seeing things he shouldn’t be. And by ‘things’ I naturally mean ‘dead people.’ Paging Haley Joel Osment!
The somewhat rambling narrative that follows is peppered with a wonderful cast of characters, from Mike—who is at times reminiscent of a less overwhelmingly competent Benton Fraser—to Mike’s combative but charming partner to an assortment of the cemeteries’ notable residents. Phineas Gage even makes an appearance! I can’t help looking favorably on any book that references Phineas Gage. Besides which, this book represents a less pretentious form of magical realism that I can really get behind.
The somewhat rambling narrative that follows is peppered with a wonderful cast of characters, from Mike—who is at times reminiscent of a less overwhelmingly competent Benton Fraser—to Mike’s combative but charming partner to an assortment of the cemeteries’ notable residents. Phineas Gage even makes an appearance! I can’t help looking favorably on any book that references Phineas Gage. Besides which, this book represents a less pretentious form of magical realism that I can really get behind.
October 29, 2009
Perhaps it was the cartoonish cover art, but I went into this book expecting a combination of "Six Feet Under" and SHAUN OF THE DEAD. What I got was much closer to "Six Feet Under", minus most of the queasy biological details. This is a very enjoyable, well paced read, with some irksome flaws: the chronology between events of the various plotlines is excedingly vague, and the physics of the ghostworld seems not to have been worked out, and seems to have been put in as a way of introducing famous "residents" of Colma into the story. Why are none of the ghosts we meet, with the exception of the newly minted Fireman Fahey, ordinary Joes?
January 28, 2014
When I started this book, I wasn't expecting much.
Made the mistake of judging it by its comic bookish cover.
Wound up heart-deep in love with the story, the lead character, the secondary characters, and the villain and his cronies but more importantly - the writing.
It's gratifying to see what a huge success the author has become.
I knew he was destined for the "big time" all along... despite my reservations about the cover art ...which turns out to have been just fine.
It fails to hawk the quality of the writing contained within but what the heck -GoodReads isn't an art review site.
Or is it?
Good novel, great writing, fine cover art.
Made the mistake of judging it by its comic bookish cover.
Wound up heart-deep in love with the story, the lead character, the secondary characters, and the villain and his cronies but more importantly - the writing.
It's gratifying to see what a huge success the author has become.
I knew he was destined for the "big time" all along... despite my reservations about the cover art ...which turns out to have been just fine.
It fails to hawk the quality of the writing contained within but what the heck -GoodReads isn't an art review site.
Or is it?
Good novel, great writing, fine cover art.
September 1, 2009
This is a terrible book. It is rife with trite interactions between poorly drawn characters. The women are about as unrealistic as you can get, conforming mostly to teenage cartoon fantasies then anything approximating anyone you've ever met. There are random samplings of nicely phrased sentences that serve little purpose in the book. The ghost-world is ineffectively drawn and boring.
November 30, 2009
It was the selection of San Francisco's One City One Book, so when my brother gave me a copy I thought I'd give it a shot. Very disappointed. Character development that crawled along about characters it was hard to care about. I was expecting something a little more in the genre fiction department, but this had the weakness of a writer who mistakenly thinks they're above genre fiction.
December 11, 2008
I think the author was wise not to let the ghost parts take over the book, but that only raises the question of their role in the book altogether. Take them out and you still have a fine novel about the main characters. They did have a kind of charm to them, but....
November 14, 2008
I don't read many novels these days, and I'm not a fan of the supernatural, but this one was worth the time. Excellent bus/train reading. Recommendation: read "Alive in Necropolis" and then rent the DVD "Colma: The Musical". Colma's made it, big time! Now it can go back to sleep...
December 10, 2008
Definitely liked the book, but not as much as I feel like I should have liked it. Can't put my finger on it, but something didn't really click with me. May just be that I read this right after Garp and there's really no comparing the two.
December 11, 2008
Everybody knows I love reading novels set in San Francisco. And this is a good one. Actually, it's mostly about Colma (thus the title), but a lot of the action takes place in The City. Like the Cookie Monster says, "That's good enough for me!"
March 4, 2009
A Colma police rookie sees ghosts and suffers from lovesickness amongst other ills in this slightly overlong but entertaining first novel
April 23, 2013
Dueling Librarians April 2013 review!
April 2, 2013
The Dueling Librarians review for April 2013!
December 11, 2021
Alive in Necropolis, a book about a rookie cop whose beat is a town with more dead residents than live residents. I picked the book because it was located in Colma, a small real life town, located about 10 minutes south of San Francisco and 5 miles north of where I lived (Pacifica). It's a town whose main feature (other than cemeteries) is a Bart station that is all gray angles and pigeon poop, so I was curious to see how the book treated it. And you know, I wanted to feel all self-righteous and indignant if the author got anything wrong (which he didn't).
It turns out though, that some of the dead in Colma, well, aren't really so dead. And some of the living are doing a pretty good job at imitating the dead, at least emotional-wise. Rookie cop Mike Mercer, one of the living-ish. Early on Mercer manages to become a local hero by saving the life of a kid who had been left taped up and left for dead in one of the local cemeteries. Not long after that though Mercer's life begins to fall apart, spurred largely by his ability to see the dead and his own ghostlike movement through his life.
Where the book really comes to life though, is when the undead dead enter. The who's who of the Colma buried includes Phineaus Gage, who has spent all of his afterlife searching for the tamping iron that shot through his eye (true story...well up to ghost part), Lilly Coit and Doc Barker who is seriously pissed off that he got stuck in the afterlife with his bullet riddled body (apparently most people get a slightly younger or older version of themselves, but generally at least a version with all parts in tact).
According to one interview, Dorst's original draft included more of the ghost world, but was pared down to a fairly minimal level by the final draft – which is a shame because this is where the book really sparkles. The police reports that summarize a portion of the action are funny. (Mercer practices writing police reports by recording his everyday life in police report format - "Friend Owen prepared beverages by mixing rum and mango juice and serving over ice. Juvenile male (approx. 6 y.o.) rode electric rocking horse outside supermarket; cried when ride ended. Subject Fiona (W-F, 43) asked if I would like to establish a permanent residence in her home; Subject expressed dissatisfaction with response.)
Even without the other-worldly guests, the book is competent and a quick read and the snappy dialogue makes it easy to see how this book would make a good movie. However. Without the ghost element, I don't think the book would have been as enjoyable and would have been a bit on the ordinary side.
It turns out though, that some of the dead in Colma, well, aren't really so dead. And some of the living are doing a pretty good job at imitating the dead, at least emotional-wise. Rookie cop Mike Mercer, one of the living-ish. Early on Mercer manages to become a local hero by saving the life of a kid who had been left taped up and left for dead in one of the local cemeteries. Not long after that though Mercer's life begins to fall apart, spurred largely by his ability to see the dead and his own ghostlike movement through his life.
Where the book really comes to life though, is when the undead dead enter. The who's who of the Colma buried includes Phineaus Gage, who has spent all of his afterlife searching for the tamping iron that shot through his eye (true story...well up to ghost part), Lilly Coit and Doc Barker who is seriously pissed off that he got stuck in the afterlife with his bullet riddled body (apparently most people get a slightly younger or older version of themselves, but generally at least a version with all parts in tact).
According to one interview, Dorst's original draft included more of the ghost world, but was pared down to a fairly minimal level by the final draft – which is a shame because this is where the book really sparkles. The police reports that summarize a portion of the action are funny. (Mercer practices writing police reports by recording his everyday life in police report format - "Friend Owen prepared beverages by mixing rum and mango juice and serving over ice. Juvenile male (approx. 6 y.o.) rode electric rocking horse outside supermarket; cried when ride ended. Subject Fiona (W-F, 43) asked if I would like to establish a permanent residence in her home; Subject expressed dissatisfaction with response.)
Even without the other-worldly guests, the book is competent and a quick read and the snappy dialogue makes it easy to see how this book would make a good movie. However. Without the ghost element, I don't think the book would have been as enjoyable and would have been a bit on the ordinary side.
August 25, 2023
Somewhere around page 300 I checked the ratings and reviews of this novel. They weren't encouraging for someone who had already been slogging along, picking this book back up repeatedly and then not making progress for weeks now. It's not that the book's premise is poor, it's promising, and the writing is often excellent.
The key problem with this book is it simply goes nowhere. It's flabby and directionless.
It's hard pretend that the following amounts to spoilers since nothing much happens, but I like using the spoiler tag, so here it goes.
Really not great, barely okay. An amateurish novel.
The key problem with this book is it simply goes nowhere. It's flabby and directionless.
It's hard pretend that the following amounts to spoilers since nothing much happens, but I like using the spoiler tag, so here it goes.
Really not great, barely okay. An amateurish novel.
November 30, 2023
Change my mind: Doug Dorst really wanted to write a vulnerable piece on a thoughtful and emotional male character navigating blossoming bromances, conflicting ambitions and duties, strained parental relationships, confusing heartbreaks, mental health issues, and the respite of spirituality, but needed a super macho guise so his friends wouldn’t rag him and he wouldn’t get asked too many questions at Thanksgiving dinner. Enter the ghost-zombie-cop-sex mystery-thriller.
We’ll get back to how I think the novel would’ve been equally good without the whole geeky supernatural thing, but before that I have to say: The writing is great. I mean really great. Dorst masterfully sketches a few key characters: a newly minted Colma police officer, Mercer; a young hormonal misfit, Jude; a confusingly romantic-platonic friend here; a financially vulnerable neighbor there; all in a way so convincing it’s hard not to get invested in everyone. By the end I completely understood how one might get so lost in their professional sense of purpose - to protect everyone in the constituency, both the living and the dead - that they might endanger not only their official title but also everything else they have. I’m actually convinced this must be somewhat autobiographical.
That said, the ghost bits - and the myriad of names, personalities, references, and backstories I couldn’t recall even if you gave me a million dollars - are dry and tedious to get through. The case reports are certainly a unique narrative device to delineate the parallel plots, and works well to preserve the ambiguity of whether ghosts are real or the narrator simply lost his mind. But I soon found myself just skimming over them to locate major plot points before hurrying to the next chapter. And I never found any.
Anyway, my personal highlights: the banter and chemistry among the cops is inexplicably funny; the commentaries on romantic, platonic, professional relationships surprisingly relatable and comforting; the love Dorst has for San Francisco delicious. Read if these resonate.
We’ll get back to how I think the novel would’ve been equally good without the whole geeky supernatural thing, but before that I have to say: The writing is great. I mean really great. Dorst masterfully sketches a few key characters: a newly minted Colma police officer, Mercer; a young hormonal misfit, Jude; a confusingly romantic-platonic friend here; a financially vulnerable neighbor there; all in a way so convincing it’s hard not to get invested in everyone. By the end I completely understood how one might get so lost in their professional sense of purpose - to protect everyone in the constituency, both the living and the dead - that they might endanger not only their official title but also everything else they have. I’m actually convinced this must be somewhat autobiographical.
That said, the ghost bits - and the myriad of names, personalities, references, and backstories I couldn’t recall even if you gave me a million dollars - are dry and tedious to get through. The case reports are certainly a unique narrative device to delineate the parallel plots, and works well to preserve the ambiguity of whether ghosts are real or the narrator simply lost his mind. But I soon found myself just skimming over them to locate major plot points before hurrying to the next chapter. And I never found any.
Anyway, my personal highlights: the banter and chemistry among the cops is inexplicably funny; the commentaries on romantic, platonic, professional relationships surprisingly relatable and comforting; the love Dorst has for San Francisco delicious. Read if these resonate.
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