Handling the Undead John Ajvide Lindquist Book Review

This book, by the author of the acclaimed Let the Right One In presupposes a scenario in which the recent dead of Stockholm revivify, one excruciatingly hot day. As we might expect from this author however, the novel offers far more than the standard zombie entrails-fest, instead it is, in part, an eloquent meditation on human responses to loss and grief.

We observe events unfolding through a range of perspectives; the first sign of what is to come is relayed to us from the viewpoint of a chance observer whom we never meet again. A larger scale perspective is offered by several bulletin style summaries of what has been happening across the city as the dead begin to awaken and the authorities and ordinary people struggle to formulate their responses. There is an underlying fear that the unprecedented crisis will prompt the state to take sinister and unaccountable measures - where are the dead being taken? Why are their relatives being discouraged from visiting? Should the reliving be classified as corpses or people with rights? There seems to be a thin line between ruthless authoritarianism and well-meaning bureaucratic bungling by human beings who don't really have a clue what to do next.

The primary focus however is on three families who have all suffered recent bereavements and have to deal with very mixed feelings as they discover that their dead have returned to a (sort of) life. It is one thing to long for your beloved to return from the grave, quite another when they actually do. Among those whom we meet are Flora, a teenage Marilyn Manson fan blighted (rather stereotypically) with self-harming tendencies and her devout Christian grandmother. David, a stand-up comedian and his young son Magnus and retired reporter strangely named Gustav Mahler and his daughter Anna. These characters are convincingly drawn, in particular David and Flora are brought to vivid life for us.

The ‘zombies’ themselves are virtual blanks; although sometimes frightening, they are more subtle than the crazed brain-devouring monsters beloved of film, but the living characters struggle to find in them the person they once knew and loved. They are essentially alien, exiled, non-functional.

In a sense their presence is like the dreams one has of those dead in which they are somehow both with us and yet not with us, we are glad to see them again yet sense that all is not right, cannot be right.

There is much in the book that remains mysterious and unexplained (though I think it is a book that would well repay rereading) but it delivers its own strangely beautiful redemption.