When people consume fictions, they experience an urge, so strong that it feels almost reptilian in origin, to categorize the story into a genre, even something as basic as drama. Doug Dorst's debut novel, Alive in Necropolis, toys with this urge and manipulates the reader's expectations to great effect... [H]e hints at tropes that all adults understand unconsciously and tells a story that refuses to embrace any of them. Nobody would describe his or her own life as a comedy, or a tragedy, or a kidnapping drama. Dorst understands this, and Necropolis is so vivid because, like life, it refuses those easy labels.