What an unexpected and wonderful read.
I think we’ve reached peak post-zombie apocalypse writing. It is no longer in vogue to write about them, but they have become such an integral part of our pop culture that they are now extremely useful vehicles for some intense post-modern existentialism. de Marcken uses the zombie trope fully, and only as it suits her purposes. The book explores themes of love, of loss, and of identity. Who are we? What are we? how do we move past unendurable grief? It made me think both of Warm Bodies, but also of Theseus’s paradox, which is an unexpected combination to say the least. As our heroine notes, “Every dead thing is the future of all live things.”
Our heroine has lost her beloved, and her name, and her arm, and that’s only where the story starts. She wanders through the world like a zombie, since she is one, deeply contemplating the meaning of all things, while also trying to make a new arm for herself out of mud or waving it “like it’s a salami”. It is a bleak story filled with absurdist humor and it packs a lot of thoughts into a very short format. Note that de Marcken isn’t giving you any answers here, except maybe that in order to let go of grief, first we have to sit with it.
As you might expect from such meditations, there are a lot of concepts of loss – violent and banal, that are explored here. If you are sensitive to any particular type of familial loss, you will probably find something that either resonates or triggers (or both). Read with care.
