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Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist
The author of one of my favorite books Let the Right One In (go read it) does to the zombie genre what that book did for the vampire genre. The set-up of Handling the Undead is about as cliche as it gets for a zombie story - freak electrical disturbances of unknown origins awake the recently deceased - but that is all that is cliche about this book. The horror of Lindqvist’s book doesn’t stem from the dead rising again, but from the very awful question few zombie stories think to even ask - how do the loved ones of the newly reanimated feel about their children and spouses coming back to life? Do these zombies have souls? What are they if they aren’t human? If your loved ones came back and there was even a CHANCE that they - their spirit/soul/whatever - was still there, wouldn’t you try to be with them? Lindqvist’s zombies aren’t flesh-eating, killing machines (well, at first), but they aren’t any less horrifying. The book does stumble a bit into cheese in the last third, but it was an interesting read. Of course, now I fear any Hollywood adaptation of this novel which will turn this thought-provoking meditation on what the human soul is into Killing Zombies-Fest. Please don’t, Hollywood.
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lovely-despair reblogged this from runnerbird
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