The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier, a review from Esquire by Anna Godbersen.
"Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead is perhaps the most densely romantic novel I have ever read to also feature a deadly airborne virus and a satire of marketing gimmicks. Brockmeier begins in a lovely, magical vein, conjuring a city of the recently deceased who live more or less like the living (they work, they eat), except that they can't reproduce, and after sixty years or so they disappear. As Luka Sims, former newspaperman, self-appointed record keeper of the city, theorizes: 'The living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only as long as they remember us.'" Read the entire Esquire review.