TThe fictional character Septimus Warren Smith from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dallowayis the first of many ghosts that haunt Sam Sax’s riotous, prosaic-poetic debut novel. You are deadIn the middle of Woolf’s masterpiece, the war veteran takes his own life – and the epigraph to this book, taken from Septimus’s story, reads: “The world swayed and shook and threatened to burst into flames. It is I who block the way.”
The novel begins with a heavy warning: it is set in the brief pause between the protagonist’s self-immolation – during a march in front of Trump Tower in New York – and his death. Reminiscent of Ocean Vuong’s lyrical meditations on identity and Maddie Mortimer’s inventive, formally ambitious Maps of our spectacular bodiesSax’s book traces the trauma and political unrest (set against the backdrop of the 2020 presidential election) that led to this moment.
When Ezra, a queer, nonbinary 27-year-old of Jewish descent, is first introduced, he is a washed-up bookseller who keeps going to protests and is fed up with their “pageantry” on social media and convinced that “it’s never enough”. After Ezra burns himself to death, You are dead catapults us back into her past; this unfolding story is her life flashing before her eyes, unspooled in a series of brisk, lyrical vignettes.
Sax is also a poet (author of the collection Pig and winner of the James Laughlin Award), and it shows—Ezra’s collected fragments of memories often read like aphoristic meditations on life’s conundrums. Everything unfolds out of chronological order: her abandonment by her mother (“one doesn’t write a book to replace a mother, but to fill her absence”); Jewish socialist summer camp (“to imagine a better world is to at least have the means to imagine it”); an abusive relationship (“love is just another thing that happens to you, like a rash or a bad radish or a car accident”). Ezra lists endangered species, is terrified of the phantom animals of Pokémon Go, and, while scrolling on his phone, is “eaten alive” by empathy.
But Sax’s experimental bravado doesn’t end there. Interwoven are the false myths invented by Ezra’s father (because “most stories about my father’s family end with a drunk half a century ago”); her parents blending into a single, eerily incoherent voice; and even echoes of her ancestors, including great-grandfather Herschel, a mischievous soap factory worker who abandoned his family in Russia and came to America, only to get drunk on Passover in the U.S. today.
There is comedy in You are dead but also much darker corners. Passages dealing with sexuality and online and physical abuse are unflinchingly frank. The novel tends to sidestep political issues, refusing to mention Trump by name or reveal the causes that inspire Ezra’s protests and their tragic final act.
But this sprawling, timeless Bildungsroman fails in its attempt to cover too much ground – it often only scratches the surface. But given the inventiveness of style, imagery and form, this is forgivable: You are dead exposes the profound loneliness of life in the digital age; how others shape us; and how from the ashes of disaster (and despite the evils of the world) humanity shines through the cracks. There is hope.
