The Inhabited World

The Inhabited World
Publishing House: Houghton Mifflin
WorkNameSort: Inhabited World, The
Since the publication of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, many writers are adopting the viewpoints of dead people, inaugurating a new trend: Zombie Lit. In David Long’s new novel The Inhabited World, protagonist Evan Malloy is a ghost marooned in the house where he committed suicide. Evan eventually finds an impotent attraction to the newest resident, a lonely woman named Maureen Keniston who is trapped in a morose affair with an abusive radiologist. As Evan watches Maureen’s life unfurl, he plunders his memories to find similar tribulations that led him to kill himself. We find a moody marriage, bouts of depression, a strained relationship with his father and a preoccupation with death. Long writes powerfully, with a poet’s precision of language. Flashbacks stall the story, however, and all dialogue is rendered in annoying italics. Still, the book is replete with musings on melancholy and faith, an interesting contemporary allegory.

This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2006.