Don,
A while ago, I downloaded the free
Amberville that got mentioned here. I finally started reading it yesterday, and after two chapters, still couldn't get my head wrapped around the (what's the word?) milieu. So, going to the web for help, I happened on a
Washington Post capsule review. And what should appear on the same page, but a review of
Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, by S.G. Browne. Based on the review, I stopped at the public library on the way home last night and picked it up (there doesn't appear to be an e-edition). It's certainly a new and unique perspective that the author calls "zom-rom-com" (zombie romantic comedy). From the back cover blurb:
Quote:
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Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new existence. But all that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls in Rita, an impossibly sexy recent suicide with a taste for the formaldehyde in cosmetic products, and Jerry, a twenty-one-year-old car-crash victim with an exposed brain and a penchant for Renaissance pornography. When the group meets a rogue zombie who teaches them the joys of human flesh, things start to get messy, and Andy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will take him from his casket to the SPCA to a media-driven class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rights of zombies everywhere.
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Sounds a little bit like the final scene in the film "Shaun of the Dead," if you've seen that. Apparently, the running gag is the complete lack of empathy that we "breathers" have for zombies, and is exemplified by wisecracks of the form "If you've never woken up from a car accident to discover that your wife is dead and you're an animated, rotting corpse, then you probably wouldn't understand."
I should keep recording these bon mots as I find them:
- "If you've never been in a dumpster coated with industrial waste while someone stabs you with a piece of sharpened rebar, then you probably wouldn't understand."
- "If you've never been staked down on the side of a hill and left out to rot at a research facility for human decay, then you probably wouldn't understand."