Zombie Slash

The biggest problem with Breathers, a great new zombie book released last month, could be that no one knows what genre it belongs to. It’s about zombies, but it’s not exactly a horror book. It has romance, but it’s no love story. It’s a dark comedy, sure, but it’s more than that. Some reviews are calling Breathers a Rom-Zom-Com, short for a zombie romantic comedy, but even that seems like a stretch.

Breathers is contemporary, humorous and sophisticated. If it weren’t for the zombies, this book would be on the shelf next to Nick Hornby’s latest and Fight Club. Why? Because I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the genre it belongs to is the poorly understood male ennui: A bored man struggles through a depressing existence, eventually learning how to take back his own life. Except the main character is a zombie, so he’s actually taking back his undeath.

And there’s no mistaking it — Breathers is definitely a zombie book. The story is told in first-person by Andy, a rotting corpse that lives in his parents’ wine cellar after reanimating, wandering out of the mortuary and getting locked up with the other itinerant undead at the SPCA. Between dull days and nights of watching bad television while drinking expensive wine and shampoo, Andy commiserates with other zombies at Undead Anonymous. Hilarity and poignancy ensue.

Breathers is cool and fresh new fiction. It’s the kind of zombie book you could loan to your mother. As long as your mother is okay with a little violence, irreverence and necrophilia — assuming it’s necrophilia if both parties are dead. Or undead. Whatever.

I’m giving Breathers five brains, then subtracting a half brain because, like zombies, the book starts off a tad slow but will get you in the end.

Further reading: Breathers has a pretty cool web page, Undead Anonymous, which has some good literature on coping with undeath.

Today is the official release date of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen. As I mentioned last week, I was super excited to read it. I’m actually a bigger fan of Austen than I generally admit, so combined with my love of zombies, I thought I’d be the perfect demographic.

The problem is that I might just be too big a fan of Austen and too big a fan of zombies to fully appreciate the combination. It’s like making a sandwich with peanut butter and bacon. They’re both delicious on their own, but together?

I know people were saying all this before the book came out, but I didn’t believe them. Because, you know, everything is better with zombies. And the zombies in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are great. There just aren’t enough of them. But, to make room for the zombies, there is also less of Darcy and Elizabeth, the characters that make Pride and Prejudice so lovable. As a result, romance and mayhem are in competition.

That said, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was thoroughly enjoyable. It was funny and gruesome and had lots of ninja vs. zombie action. Grahame-Smith’s interpretation of Regency England included ongoing humor about vomit and balls. (Historical note: “Balls” once referred to social gatherings at which guests danced, rather than, “heheh, balls.”) Really, I couldn’t put the book down.

Grahame-Smith’s literary mashup, though not wholly seamless, is a fun and fantastical take on the Austen’s classic novel. Austen was a progressive woman with a sense of humor, but she feared that Pride and Prejudice was “rather too light, and bright, and sparkling.” Had she lived in modern times, maybe she would have realized that zombies were exactly the soiling the novel needed. Maybe.

I’m giving the book four brains out of five.