Paperback, 132 pages
English language
Published March 7, 2024 by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Breathtaking from start to finish. A zombie novel as carrier for something deeper, so true and so sad. I read it alone in the dark, and thought to myself, thank god, something is real.
Content warning vague spoilers
4 stars: loved this book, would recommend
Well maybe more like 3.5.
I wanted this to be a very specific book and it wasn't that book at all. I picked it up in a bookstore and understood the premise to be that the main character is dead and has forgotten who she was when she was alive but also is still very much around. And this is true.
But it is kind of a zombie story, from the perspective of a zombie, and I wanted it to be, I don't know, Kentucky Route zero.
Nothing really happens in this book, so if you are expecting things to happen you might be disappointed, but I was kind of actually expecting fewer things to happen. The short bursts of violence seem kind of incongruous and irrelevant. The whole crow thing also did not land for me. I don't think anything really needed to mean anything or to symbolize anything. The dismemberment worked, though, the sort of alienation both from the world and from the self. And the sense of wandering around an abandoned world.
I read it all in one sitting. I'm a little disappointed because it's only like 80% of the extremely specific story I hoped it was. I'm not sure if I'm exactly recommending it. But I am glad I read it.
