Arthur Leander is an actor literally dying for his craft on the stage during King Lear, and then the world ends. Georgia Flu sweeps across the world and wipes out 99% of humanity, leaving the rest scrambling to survive.
The real heart of this book is its cast of characters, all revolving in some way around Arthur. One man tries to resuscitate him on the stage. One man is his lifelong friend. His three ex-wives, his son...all of them connected in some way to Arthur and in smaller ways, to each other. The most fascinating of these is the girl who was on stage with him for King Lear; in the aftermath of the flu, she joins a travelling symphony and makes her way around the barren Midwest, acting out Shakespeare for the people left along the way.
If you're looking for something heavy on plot, you won't find it here, but what you will find is a deeply engaging, melancholy, regretful, and thoroughly destroyed (in some cases) cast of characters who manage to keep each other alive in memory and deed.
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