Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins is a genre-defying exploration of life, death, and legacy, told through the lens of sixty obituaries. As Peregrine, an AI mother, searches for meaning after the sudden death of her daughter Poppy, the novel weaves a complex narrative that spans time and generations. Through the fragmented lives of its protagonists, Robins crafts a poignant meditation on human connection, the impact of actions, and the inescapable cycle of existence. The story’s innovative structure—told through obituaries and interwoven histories—creates a thought-provoking and unconventional reading experience. With its blend of grief, art, and profound existential questions, Remember You Will Die is a bold and introspective journey into the heart of humanity.

This book was *not* for me. I tried it, and it just wasn't my cup of tea. Ended up DNF'ing after giving it a fair shot.

North Adams author explores grief, AI and human connections in new novel using obituary-style storytelling
'Remember You Will Die' constructs narrative through obituary-style storytelling

NORTH ADAMS — If you've ever gone down a rabbit hole while doing research, North Adams author Eden Robins' second novel will feel oddly familiar.

"Remember You Will Die" begins with a newspaper clipping from Nov. 6, 2102, reporting the drowning of a teenage girl in the East River. Details are sketchy, save for an anonymous phone call reporting the death. The caller, who refers to the girl as "Poppy," also insists there is a suicide note that was folded into a paper airplane and lost as it floated through the air. Police, battling torrential rains and flooding, feel they have nothing to go on. They are unsure there was even a drowning.

Days later, another clipping confirms that a suicide note, folded into the shape of an airplane, has been found by a sailboat. The identity of the drowning victim is confirmed as 17-year-old Poppy Fletcher, a girl whose birth and existence has been one of rumor and the subject of conspiracy theorists. Poppy, of fable and legend, is the daughter born to Peregrine, a sentient Artificial Intelligence who was given an artificial body and later a donated uterus.

Peregrine is no ordinary AI. We sense its grief as it searches for signs of its child; which it protectively shielded from the world in The Berkshires. It's love for the child eventually leads Poppy feeling isolated and smothered. Poppy runs away. Her reported death causes Peregrine to experience grief; to search for the child.

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"Remember You Will Die" by Eden Robins

Published by Sourcebooks Landmark

336 pages

$16.99

What follows in the pages of "Remember You Will Die" appears to be the research of a private investigator or a curious interloper — story of Peregrine and Poppy, mother and daughter, unfolds in a most unlikely manner — through a series of obituaries with the occasional interjection of a dispatch from the AI Collective, from which Peregrine originated. This, however, is not told in a traditional manner. It's format is more akin to the novelization of the ramblings of conspiracy theorists as they connect newspaper clippings, tacked to a cork board, with red string.

This collection of obituaries — belonging to seemingly unconnected people — begins as a series of blurry glimpses into the lives of seemingly ordinary and unconnected individuals, but quickly comes into focus when connections start to form between these "ordinary" individuals and the extraordinary events that allow Peregrine to exist in the physical world and eventually give birth to a child.

Robins, who previously lived in Chicago, will have an obituary writing workshop and book signing, 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 22, at Wander, in Pittsfield, and a reading and book signing, 10 a.m. Jan. 25, at the Research & Development Store at Mass MoCA .

Robins recently spoke with The Eagle over Zoom. What follows is an excerpt from that interview. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

THE EAGLE: How long have you lived in North Adams? What brought you to the Berkshires?

EDEN ROBINS: Looking at my calendar, it's been exactly three months. We've been trying to move out here for a long time and one thing or another got in the way. So, it's good to be here.

Read it
"Remember You Will Die" by Eden Robins

Published by Sourcebooks Landmark

336 pages

$16.99

A combination of things brought us here. My husband and I grew up in Chicago. We lived in the city for 18 years, We kind of wanted something different. I've lived in cities my entire adult life. We were looking for an artistic community that still had a lot going on, but was smaller in scale; that was close to nature and close to some of our friends who live out here. Being from the Midwest, the fact that you can get to New York and Boston and even Montreal in three hours is a novelty. The Berkshires just kind of checked all the boxes.

THE EAGLE: This is your second novel. How did it come about? How did you come up with the concept of telling a story through obituaries?

ROBINS: Right before the pandemic started, I had quit my job — I'd some money — I was gonna take some time and write another novel. Then, of course, the pandemic hit. I ended up with this terrible writer's block and I didn't know what to do. I started and stopped a bunch of projects. I just didn't have any focus. Then I went through a series of just crazy attempts.

The cartoonist and novelist Linda Berry talked about when she had writer's block, she painted the rough draft of her novel on legal pads. I was like sure, "let's try it." And so, I started just writing on legal pads with paint and because I it's very hard to do, it meant I had to slow my brain down. I wasn't able to get too much in my head. I wasn't able to think too far ahead. I just ended up kind of writing a bunch of weird stuff and in the midst of all that it just popped into my head, "What if I wrote a book of obituaries?"

Right from the beginning, I didn't know how to do it, but I was like, I don't want any standard narrative. I realized that makes things incredibly difficult for me. But, I was feeling experimental at the time. I watched a documentary on the New York Times obit desk. It was fascinating. One of the things I learned from it was that unless somebody's famous and they have a pre-written obit for him, the desk would get a brief in the morning and then be expected to file an obituary by the end of the day. I thought that was really a sort of wonderful responsibility to learn about somebody in a single day. So, I tasked myself with writing an obituary every day. I had no idea what the story was going to be. Or how they would all fit together. Every day I just told myself, "I will figure that out eventually."

THE EAGLE: How did you bring all the obituaries together into a narrative?

ROBINS: I just wrote whatever I felt like writing that day. The actual drafting part was fairly straightforward. It was in the editing that all of the all the work came in because I moved obits around. I put them on note cards. I shuffled them around. At one point I bought the same version of the model of electric typewriter that Kurt Vonnegut used off of eBay for like $20 bucks. I typed it on a typewriter and then scanned those pages. I mean, it was I was trying everything I possibly could to make it all fit together. But at no point was I like, "Yep. I know exactly where this is going."

THE EAGLE: Wow, that's really interesting because they all interconnect so beautifully.

ROBINS: It took a very, very long time to make that work. My husband helped a lot. He helped me put together a timeline on newsprint so I could look at all the characters and [figure out how they connected]. I changed dates and who overlapped with whom, and saw things that I didn't even notice when I was writing it. I did a big family tree on newsprint. Visualizing it helped a lot to make those connections work.

THE EAGLE: How did you come to decide to have an AI character that had a physical being?

ROBINS: It's funny to answer questions like these because it comes across as though this was all really deliberate. Um, it was not. It was all a lot of trial and error. I would just experiment — try something and see if it felt right. I was really uncomfortable with the idea of using AI at all because: A, I'm not an expert; and, B, I was writing this right as ChatGPT was coming into public consciousness. Sci-Fi and reality were starting to become the same thing really fast. I was worried that if I was going to write about AI, it would quickly sound obsolete, especially when I was trying to talk about the future ...

So, the AI ideas I had, for me, had to feel like they were really out there but also still interesting to me and also did not require me to be an expert.

But, also the book is about grief. Ultimately the decision I came to was that grief feels very alien, even to us who are human ... It's very destabilizing, and even though you know what it is, it feels very foreign. I thought, "Well, what if a non-human entity was experiencing grief? How would they try to process it? What sort of tools would they have?"

That's where the idea of the obituaries clicked into place — maybe they're searching all of these human obituaries in order to try and develop an emotional vocabulary for themselves.

I really loved the concept of this book - a story told through obitiuaries - it is unique and I typically really enjoy the mixed media in a book.

However perhaps because this was an e-book, perhaps because it wasn't a good fit for me - I struggled to get through this one. I found it very confusing to follow the story and the characters amd how they interwove. I didn't feel connected to the world over the span of time or to the characters. I found myself flipping back, trying to find the connections and overall just feeling a little lost.

This would be a perfect story for those who really like to dig in and sit with a story - who love delving and seeing the connections but for me it just didn't work.

Kudos to the author for taking on writing some a complex interwoven story. The right reader for this one is definitely out there.

This collection of obituaries and reflections of lives lived is a fever dream of a novel. SOmetimes i love books like this and sometimes it's like "what did i just read" and i'm not sure where this one falls on the spectrum. There are references to recurring characters whose lives are touched by many around them as the plot weaves and lingers.

This book just wasn't for me.

There was a lot going on and it was confusing. I really did not enjoy this book and wish i would have DNF the book.

Thanks NEtGalley for letting me read and review.

This was not at all like I was expecting, and that’s partially my fault. I have a weird relationship with AI: fascinated by it and terrified of it at the same time. This is one of the oddest novels I have read (it’s almost an epistolary), and I don’t think I understood most of it.

A fascinating book with a unique structure where obituaries and other bits of life and death are strung together, revealing deeper and more profound connections as the story is told. I loved the sense of a tapestry woven through centuries with lives and deaths intersecting, past and future interacting, pieces mirroring each other. Technology, societal upheaval, and climate change, as well space exploration all come into the mix as well.

A TREMENDOUS hybrid of speculative fiction, time travel, and grief. I'll admit it almost lost me in the beginning, but I refused to stop reading and eventually, I became so enamored as I started to see the loose threads start to come together that I plan to reread and annotate to better understand the different characters and how they merge to form this beautiful narrative. With that said, this is an experiment in memory for both the reader and (I suspect) the narrator, so it is not for everyone. I think this is one you either love or hate, but I LOVE it!

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, this book just didn’t work for me. I had a hard time understanding what’s going on or why this book was even written. It just didn’t work for me.

I hope others love it.

Because this was the unedited version, I had a harder time reading it only because of the formatting - however it was a very interesting book and I will be buying a copy of the finished version to re-read and see if I missed anything!

This book requires a certain level of attention. It jumps from one time period to another, mostly through obituaries, even goes into the future of the human race. It is a statement on art and technology and science. And while it could be confusing at first, once you start to see the patterns, it gets easier.

“Remember You Will Die” by Eden Robins will blow your mind. The tale of a grieving AI mother told through obituaries is masterful work. Not only are you asked to consider an AI who can feel enough to grieve, but you will sit back and wonder how Robins wove this tale together. The interplay of the plot and structure makes “Remember You Will Die” a page turner. You will laugh at an epic concert. Be in awe of the artistry of tattoos. The folks we meet through their obits are both iconic and ordinary. Leaving you to ponder how we live and love, as well as what legacy means - a film, art, or simply the person who mourns you.

After rereading the synopsis, I guess this did deliver what it promised, but it played out vastly differently than I thought it would. So I am a little torn about how to rate it.

It is the most original book I've read this year, but it was also a little hard for me to get the thread. I'll give it an A for effort and while the execution will definitely find its audience, it wasn't me. But that is probably all on me being way outside my comfort zone.

I hate to DNF a book this early, but at 10% I’m hating every second. The gimmick of a book written in obituaries appealed to me, and the prose is good. The plot though is nonexistent. I’ve also recently (through no fault of the book) realized that I do not enjoy AI books.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were relatable and the flow of the book was a good pace. The author had me on the edge of my seat and I wanted to know what would happen next. I can't wait to see what else this author will come out with.

I usually love a puzzle book, but this one was too abstract even for my tastes. Told entirely in obituaries, Remember You Will Die traverses continents as well as galaxies as it unspools a story about family, love, and grief. It was fun to spot the connections between characters and places, with clever little details that reminded me of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. However, as enjoyable as it was to spot these easter eggs, I grew bored with the broader details, and found the plot to lack propulsion. The story is almost obsessive in its focus on specific concepts and idyosyncratic characteristics of people. While a fascinating deep dive, it doesn't always make for a coherent narrative.

2.5 stars - I think the premise for this one unfortunately was much better than its execution. I loved the idea of exploring motherhood between an AI and her daughter through exploring obituaries and news articles. Unfortunately, and maybe this is a me problem, I just didn't find the writing to really follow through with this premise. The obituaries (/articles/forum posts/definitions) are all interconnected yes, but they did not really connect often back to Poppy and Peregrine which is what I was mainly here for. I usually really love epistolary formatted novels and while I did appreciate that through these stories we looked at how humanity evolved over a century - but again, I really felt as though we were missing that thread to explain why we were reading more obituaries that loosely tied into what the premise promised. Maybe there is a larger convoluted plot that I am too dumb to have pieced together, but I found myself feeling meh whenever I picked this one back up.

The premise was promising but it didn't land for me. Grappling with grief in the world of AI is a tough take on modernity and mortality.

This was a weird book and wasn't what I was expecting but it was interesting. If I had known what it really was, I probably wouldn't have picked it up and it wasn't my cup of tea but still, I get what they were going for and it will have its audience,

3 stars