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On pride, prejudice, and brain-eating zombies:

Earlier this year, I heard of the imminent publication of a little book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Now, I love me some zombies.  There’s just something about the dead rising from their graves to eat and infect the living that makes me all tingly inside.  Have I mentioned that one of my favorite books last year was a lovely zombie horror novel called World War Z?  Well, it was.  In fact, just the other day I was wondering if I wanted to use RIP IV as excuse to reread it.

But I digress.  My point is, after I heard about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I was all over it.  I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.  In the meantime, I decided to read Jane Austen’s original work.  After all, how could I fully appreciate the mash-up joke of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies if I had nothing to compare it to?

So read Pride and Prejudice, I did.  And here’s something I hadn’t really anticipated: I loved it.  I mean I really, really loved it.  I loved the characters, the story and, more importantly, Jane Austen’s writing.  I was still excited to read P&P&Z but, frankly, Grahame-Smith had his work cut out for him if he was going to, in any way, create something as good as the original.

Sadly, I have to say that, as much as I wanted to like P&P&Z it just fell a little flat for me.  Plot-wise, P&P&Z is fairly identical to the original except for the addition of zombies who burst onto the scene every once in a while to eat the brains of some unlucky Englishman or woman.  Admittedly, the way that Grahame-Smith worked the zombie plotline into the rest of the story was occasionally very well-done.  For instance, I enjoyed the way Grahame-Smith made the main objection Lady Catherine had to Elizabeth was the fact that Elizabeth had trained in a Chinese dojo as opposed to a much more respectable Japanese dojo.

However.  Sigh.  However, I really hate to say this of any author, but the whole endeavor came off as more than a little lazy.  For much of the novel, I had the feeling that Grahame-Smith really didn’t think beyond ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if someone added zombies to a Jane Austen novel?’

I’ve often heard P&P&Z classified as a satire, but for the life of me, I couldn’t really figure out exactly what Grahame-Smith was supposed to be satirizing.  Was it the close examination of drawing-room manners that is so often found in Jane Austen novels?  Or was it the romance between Jane and Bingley and Elizabeth and Darcy?  And if, in fact, Grahame-Smith was satirizing one or both of those things… to what effect?  Satire is often meant to reveal some hidden truth through the medium of humor.  If, through the inclusion of zombies in P&P&Z, Grahame-Smith was trying to say something about Austen’s narrative, I remain ignorant as to what it was.

So perhaps I’m thinking too deeply about something that was merely supposed to be fun.  I can appreciate that.  After all, that’s why I wanted to read it in the first place.  The problem is, excepting a few infrequent passages, I didn’t find it all that funny.  Nor did I find it particularly scary, which was a tragedy considering that Grahame-Smith’s main gimmick was the inclusion of, well, zombies.

The fact that the book is credited to both Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen is telling.  It’s telling because, as far as I could see, Grahame-Smith did very little writing of his own.  What he did was occasionally insert zombies into the story while leaving the meat of the original work standing.  The result was indeed a “mash-up” and a messy one at that.

Grahame-Smith had a prime opportunity here to take Jane Austen’s story and make it his own.  He could have done something memorable and creative.  He could have gone for the gusto and tried to make it really funny or really scary.  Instead, he relied on the simple inclusion of zombies to do his dirty work and – bad pun coming – those zombies were dead on arrival.  My final conclusion? Grahame-Smith threw away a fun idea on a good title and a great cover.  I was, to say the least, disappointed.

If you’re on the fence about reading this novel, I recommend skipping it.  Wait for the movie.  I actually suspect it’ll be better.

*First book completed for Carl’s RIP IV challenge.

Other Reviews:

Bailey’s and Books
Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
The Book Lover
Reality Bites…Fiction Does It Better
All Kinds of Writing
Lisa the Nerd
S. Worthen Weblog
Fuzzy Cricket
Book Rat

Hmm… I get the feeling I’ve missed quite a few reviews. If that’s the case, let me know!

Happy reading everyone!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen
Quirk Classics / April 2009
$12.95 / 319 pps.

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