Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After, by Steve Hockensmith

I know, I know, you're thinking, enough with the zombies already.


It's never enough; or, at least, not when it comes to the Pride and Prejudice series reboot, it isn't. It's a sickness, I know; I just can't seem to help myself. You have no idea the glee I felt when I realized that there was yet another piece to the Dreadful puzzle.


In case you have no idea what all the fuss is about, there is a whole genre out there of literature comprised of authors taking literature from the public domain and adding horror elements to them; the best of these is by far the butchery of the Pride and Prejudice series, which began with Seth Grahame-Smith's 'Pride & Prejudice and Zombies'. Hockensmith then picked up the mantle, writing the prequel 'Dawn of the Dreadfuls' and now the now-trilogy's finale, Dreadfully Ever After. The biggest difference between the two authors' work is that SGS inserted the 'horror' portions into Austen's work, whereas SH has written two entirely new novels extending the original story.


In DEA, the Dreadfuls (in high-society England, 'zombie' is considered poor language - the creatures are referred to as 'Poor Unfortunates', Dreadfuls, or in a pinch, 'Zeds') are once again making themselves a nuisance. The novel begins with Darcy being bitten by one such unfortunate, making it necessary for Elizabeth to call upon his aunt, the shrewish Catherine de Bourgh, for assistance in keeping her beloved from turning into a flesh-eating fop. Elizabeth, whose fighting skills have been forced onto a back burner due to the impropriety of a married woman carrying a weapon, is further horrified to find that Lady Catherine's plan involves her taking Darcy back to her home, while sending Lizzy, along with her father and one of her sisters, to woo the manufacturer of the only known cure for Zed-ism. Of course, the Lady has her own motives for getting the cure, not the least of which being revenge upon the lower-class Elizabeth for stealing Darcy from his intended, Catherine's daughter, who is looking surprisingly... peaked... these days. Meanwhile, London is in the process of falling to the zombies, who have found a way around the multi-walled defense system of the city. This final novel sees Elizabeth struggling emotionally with her prescribed place in society, and the dark presence of de Bourgh playing the hand of the social norm forcing her into a coquettish role opposite of her true nature; interestingly, this is a battle Austen herself faced as the society or her time tried to quelch her true intellect and character into one more 'appropriate'. In the end, only the extreme fighting skills of the Bennett-Darcy family, along with the help of several ninjas and a mysterious man in a box, can stop the country's - and Darcy's - descent into flesh-eating mania, and Elizabeth's capitulation into depression.


The reason all of this insanity works is the deliciously ridiculous dichotomy between the period-appropriate expectations for and speech of the characters and the china-star fighting style of the Bennett sisters. Cleverness, intelligence, and sly wit save the novel from being mere b-movie spoof material and turn it into something more intellectual, almost droll. I have said it before, these are 'horror' lit novels for the NPR crowd. As usual, pen-and-ink illustrations are included, which heighten the feeling that this could *almost* be an extension of the original, had Austen had an interest in the grotesque. Also present once again are language and phrasing that are close to something I could have imagined Austen using. While it is an easy thing to copy someone else's work, it is not an easy thing to create something new in the imagined voice of someone else successfully, and continually.

I was mildly concerned before reading this latest installment that it would unravel towards the end, and use too-easy techniques to get to the pre-decided plot resolution, but it really didn't. Hockensmith kept the characters on-track throughout the climax, and the eventual resolution was very satisfying. While I am disapointed that, from the look of it, this will probably remain a trilogy, I appreciate the author's respect for the characters, both their classic and made-over traits. Is Austen rolling in her grave, or perhaps climbing out of it entirely? Maybe, but but if she is, it's only to eat the delicious brain of one Steve Hockensmith.

Rating: five out of five. Another fun romp in the imagined past with Elizabeth Bennett, zombie-killer.

Review: A Cup of Friendship, by Deborah Rodriguez

The latest book by Deborah Rodriguez, A Cup of Friendship, is a sort of Steel Magnolias that takes place in Afghanistan. In fact, if you liked that movie, and are also interested in the experiences of women in the middle east, I can almost guarantee that you would enjoy this novel, and should in fact trot out and get it forthwith. If not, still consider reading it, because there are enough differences that might still make it worthwhile for your at least borrowing from the library (actually, I always recommend visiting your local library, because you never know what you might find there).

To be honest, I was slightly put of from picking up this book simply because of its title; it was a little too close to the cup of tea thing. (Unlike almost everyone else in the universe, it seems, I did *not* like the Greg Mortenson book, and as a result I admit to feeling a little smug when it came out a few months ago that he's a big, fat, liar-liar-pants-on-fire. So there.) However, after skimming a few pages, I decided to give it a try, and I'm glad I did. There are several characters in the story, many of which had a story compelling enough to have her own complete novel, such as Yazmina, a pregnant young widow taken from her home to settle a debt who escapes her captors in Kabul, or Halajan, an older woman who is having a culturally-forbidden romance via letter with a man from her childhood, but the main character of 'Friendship' is Sunny, an American transplant who owns the small coffeshop in downtown Kabul that is the gravitational force for all the novel's characters. Sunny's main dilemma, unfortunately, is between two men, both of whom do mysterious 'danger pay' work for different governments with political interests in the country; I say unfortunately because in comparison to what the other characters are going through, Sunny's man-challenge is pretty basic. However, thankfully, this is not her sole purpose as a character, as the existence of the coffee shop itself is threatened daily by sectarian violence and the financial concerns that result, and she must work with her friends and the Afghani family she has cobbled together to raise money to keep the cafe open.

This probably all sounds like a pretty basic plot, and perhaps it is, but what is really compelling about the story is the characters themselves. Rodriguez, the author of the bestselling Kabul Beauty School, has lived in Kabul and thus knows the intricacies of the culture and those who must navigate the seemingly endless social requirements; her experience has helped her to create realistic, living characters that the reader can establish a relationship with. Especially interesting to me was her portrayal of the foreign presence, which was kind yet didn't flinch away from pointing out the patriarchical nature of the many parties with their hand in the Afghan pot. Also, Rodriguez includes the male perspective in this collaborative-narrator story, which is novel both in that men's thoughts aren't frequently included in women's literature, especially in any sort of believable fashion, and in that the men are Afghani, who typically do not share their thoughts with women. The author also delves into the dangerous dichotomy that is being a woman in Afghanistan; women are expected to bear sons for their husbands, yet if the husband dies while she is pregnant, she can be killed as a whore, and when the son grows up, he like any man can kill her for any perceived infraction of the social code.

Some of the characters in the story are more believable than others, and at times Rodriguez does slip into the easy-solution arena, exchanging some credibility for ease in making a point, setting a scene, or resolving a plot twist. It seems that she had scenarios in mind for each character arch, and perhaps didn't spend as much time thinking up ways to make these events happen in a totally believable fashion - there is one character in particular who has Money and Connections, and who greases the wheels of the plot with increasing frequency as the novel reaches its apex. Also, one of the male characters at the crux of the story makes his mental transformation in a little too perfect of a manner to be realistic, but it does tie up the plot nicely. To be utterly real, one of the characters would have had to kill at least one of the others; this would have changed the whole tone of the book and perhaps not worked out, either.

I do wonder, though, if the novel turned into something that Rodriguez hadn't intended in the beginning, because as the plot progresses, new characters are introduced that become increasingly integral to the story, while those present from the beginning aren't paid quite as much attention. It was increasingly clear that what Rodriguez really wanted to do was write a social commentary on Afghanistan culture, focused on its treatment of women, with a side plot on foreign involvement, and this novel is split between the relationship stories and the girlfriend-power let's-fix-it side. Interestingly, while the author is obviously critical of foreign involvement in the country, the main characters who are the driving force for positive change in the story are all foreign white women. Rodriguez herself was a foreigner in Kabul, providing women with training to better their lives, so perhaps it is only the geo-political military 'aid' she is truly critical of, but regardless the characters' claims that Afghan people should be left alone to run their own country seems contrary to the actual events in the story.

All in all, this was an excellent book that I enjoyed reading. The characters are likable and varied, the atmosphere interesting and realistic. There are a few plot-conveniences, but the resolution wasn't totally inconceivable. The glimpse into the culture of Afghanisan, particularly for those who haven't read much about the social norms there, makes the book worth the read.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars. Interesting characters in a realistic environment, with a few questionable plot conveniences and a mixed political message.

Review: Graveminder, by Melissa Marr

Prior to writing Graveminder, Melissa Marr focused on YA romantic fantasy / sci fi writing; in this story, her first foray into adult fiction, Marr carries over those themes in a slightly darker vein. If you are familiar with this blog at all, you know that I'm all over the new higher-brow zombie-inclusion trend, and the insinuation on the book jacket that something would be crawling out of a grave was all the encouragement I needed to zap this title right into my Nook.


I wasn't sure what to expect, since while I like the zombie action, I'm not really a fan of romance, because too many writers take the easy road and make ultra-predictable novels based on sappy soft-core porn. Although Graveminder is billed as somewhat of a romance, I was pleasantly surprised, because the relationship between the novel's two main characters is really a back-burner issue, tangental to the main plot.

The novel opens with a strange interaction in a graveyard between an elderly woman and an oddly dirty, skinny girl that leaves the reader with a strong sense of Wrong; that feeling is substantiated a few pages later in a discovery that necessitates main character Rebekkah Barrow, a wanderer who has been resisting a strong urge to return to her hometown for many years, to attend to the final affairs of the woman who had become her adopted grandmother. Only a select few in the town are able to discuss events surrounding the dead woman, as well as other town eccentricities, without developing debilitating migraines. The juicy secret that binds the town is centuries old, and leads Rebekkah and her on-again, off-again childhood love literally to purgatory and back while a conspiracy involving the undead threatens to munch the brains of everyone in town.


Really, there is so much going on in this story that it's difficult to outline the plot without giving anything away. The chapters are told from a few different points of view, including some guest spots from zombie thoughts, so the reader has more pieces of the puzzle than the individual main characters do quite often, but these pieces don't fit together in any meaningful way until the main characters have caught up. There are times when Marr strays dangerously close to the hokey, during the periods when the characters transition between worlds, and these are the weakest parts of the novel, but overall she does an excellent job of allowing the characters, and readers, experience the events in an organic way; she never forces characters to do something ridiculous to belabor a point, and readers are trusted to keep up with the events and remember details on their own rather than having the literary neon signs that many authors provide throughout a plot. The character's relationships seem realistic, and the explanation given as to why there's not an uproar in the town over the events is simple and reasonable. Additionally, whether intended or not, there is some dark humor in the tale... or maybe I just find zombie attacks funny. Either way, I had a good time reading this story, and a hard time putting it down.

Rating: four and a half stars out of five. Entertaining, darkly funny, suspenseful tale of a town where Here and Now meets Hereafter.

Review: The Memory Palace, by Mira Bartok

I am a sucker for a good rough-life memoir. Give me three hundred pages of overcoming childhood adversity, throw in some life-threatening events, sprinkle liberally with mental illness and financial hardship, and I'm all in. It's my version of reality TV, classed up a bit.

Unfortunately, for a few different reasons, Mira Bartok's The Memory Palace just didn't do it for me. Certainly, her childhood was pretty horrific, with a schizophrenic mother, frighteningly violent grandfather, and abused grandmother; the ordeals she suffered at the hands of these people were at once heartbreaking and riveting. As adults, Bartok and her sister would both eventually change their names and hide their locations from their mother due to the danger she posed to their personal, professional, and physical lives, reuniting with their by-then homeless mother only on her deathbed. For her part, Bartok describes reliving the caretaker role in other relationships, including one ill-fated marriage, until she herself was in a car accident that necessitated having someone care for her due to brain injury.

As interesting as these events are, however, Bartok is unable to make them gel into one coherent, compelling story. Each detail and event is told as if happening in a void; this is not a story of her life, which contained unique challenges, but rather the story of those challenges in and of themselves. Thus, the reader ends up with less of a connection to Bartok herself, which is a problem in a memoir. I don't know a lot about what went on with her in school, if she had friends, what kinds of conversations she had with people, what her day-to-day adult life was like, and so I went through the book not really feeling like Bartok had allowed me in. Bartok is not an adult fiction writer, and she had a lifetime's practice hiding her experiences from everyone around her, and I wonder if perhaps that perfected secretiveness made it difficult for her to allow the emotional openness that would have been required to make The Memory Palace the story it could have been.

Bartok also seemed to be trying to tell both her story *and* that of her mother, but not filling in enough detail of either story, particularly during her adulthood, to make a connection with either person. For instance, late in the book, she makes us aware via a conversation with her sister that she is dating a poet whom her sister doesn't like because he's unemployed; in the next chapter, a good deal of time has passed, they have been married for awhile, and it suddenly comes out that he's been increasingly showing signs of potential schizophrenia himself - how did it get to that point? Why did she marry this person? We don't know. These details are important in a memoir. If this were fiction, maybe I could give it more of a pass, but this is a real life, and there are real details and answers out there; don't just dangle a carrot like that in front of me and pretend details aren't important, because they are.

This memoir could have been so much better. As it was, I wasn't drawn in enough to even really want to finish it, although I did because I can't stand leaving unfinished books around. Maybe after reading The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls' amazing memoir or living with mentally ill and drug addicted parents, I am completely spoiled. I just know that I wanted more from this story, because I know it's there, but perhaps Bartok simply isn't in a place emotionally, or mentally, to want or be able to fully reveal it.

Rating: one star. Disappointingly unengaging, disjointed memoir of a schizophrenic's daughter.

Review: Joy School, by Elizabeth Berg

Elizabeth Berg's newest novel, Joy School, is actually a continuation of a previous novel, Durable Goods, that I read long enough ago that I didn't actually make the connection between the two until I was midway through the story. The characters felt familiar, but there are enough changes in the circumstances that it wasn't immediately obvious to me what was going on.

Joy School is the (continued) story of Katie, who serves as the teenaged narrator of the book, which seems to take place in the sixties or so (the actual year isn't mentioned). She and her father have recently moved to Missouri after what is hinted as being a long line of relocations, and Katie is once again the New Girl, with all the challenges that go along with that status. The neighbor kids delight in being nasty to her, and her best friend's letters, which are few and far between, reflect a widening gap in maturity and experiences that make no connection with Katie's current situation. Her family situation is also a challenge, due to the death of her mother prior to the start of the book; her older sister has run away with a boyfriend to Mexico, and her father leans towards violence as a result of depression over the entire situation. Katies horizons begin to widen when she falls in (unrequited) love with an older, married young man and befriends another transplant, a beautiful student model with a penchant for shoplifting and parking.

Berg takes what could be a seedy and stereotypical plot and creates what is actually a sweet and fairly innocent story more related to a modern version of Beverly Cleary's teenage series than (gag) Twilight; throughout, I kept thinking of Fifteen, and Jean and Johnny (probably because the young man Katie falls in love with is named Jimmy, but the tone is the similar). Katie is a normal girl that many of us could relate to, and frankly who I hope my daughter would relate to; she has a moral compass, and is looking for more from life than cheap thrills. Berg does a good job reflecting the character of the general time period, rather than imposing current cultural standards on the characters. The sixties and early seventies were a time of huge social shifting, and Katie's experiences teeter on the edge of the precipice - on the one hand, she dreams about bringing Jimmy baked goods, and on the other she gets dragged along on what she discovers are very physical 'parking' dates and shoplifting lessons with her questionable new friend.

Katie's age-appropriate voice as narrator makes for a simple, yet not quite simplistic, read. The book goes fast, and took me literally two sittings to get through. Having only one perspective means that the other characters are not as developed as they could have been; I would be very interested in reading a book that focuses on her sister's separate journey. Berg gives tantalizing tidibts of information regarding her experience via Katie's interpretation, and I would like to see that fleshed out more; it's a bit of a shame that the story didn't have two parts, with the sister's telling their own stories separately at the beginning, converging into one when the family is reunited, and splitting up again afterward. That having been said, Berg does an excellent job of allowing Katie to tell her story in full, in a realistic and truthful manner.

If you enjoy YA literature in particular, or have nostalgic feelings about the YA stories of your youth, this is a good selection for you. If you prefer Twilight-esque sexual tension and melodrama, this may not be what you're looking for.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5: a sweetly charming coming-of-age tale about a level-headed heroinne.

Review: The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

I read a lot of material, both new and old, and it's not often that I come across a recently-published book that I would call 'literature'. Edward P. Jones' work, The Known World, crosses the line between novel and Work effortlessly. I am not the only one who thinks so - Jones won the 2004 Pulitizer prize for literature, and the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. It spreads across the mind like spilled water on an old wood floor, silently sliding, soaking in, and bringing texture into sharp relief.

Placed in the antebellum south, TKW is a broadly sweeping story that centers around the life and death of Henry, the favored slave of a wealthy plantation owner who, in a gross twisting of values, comes to own a large number of his own slaves as a freed adult. Strange as it seems, this is an actual historical detail; some freed slaves did indeed go on to own plantations with slaves. This in itself makes for a fascinating basis, because it seems completely counter-intuitive for such a thing to occur. Henry's life is at the center of a maelstrom of humanity created by Jones; there are so many characters in this story I honestly had a difficult time keeping everyone straight for quite awhile, and briefly considered creating a small chart to help me organize everyone. Via webbed plot lines, the reader learns the life and eventual fate of at least twenty inter-related characters, both slave and master, white and black, male and female, told in their own voices; these characters are so thoroughly and realistically created that I found myself having to look back at the binding to make sure I was reading fiction and not a recording of actual events. The prose is reminicent of a much older work, including the chapter titles, which are in the format of short descriptive phrases, like those you would see in a piece from a hundred years ago or more, such as Frederick Douglass' personal narrative. The entire package together successfully transports the reader into the 1800s, making the events that much more engrossing.

The story is long, at approximately 305pp for the Nook version (the paperback is listed as having 432pp, I'm not sure where the discrepancy comes from there), and yet there is not a word wasted. Unlike many authors I have read recently, Jones is not afraid to carry his tale to its natural completion, rather than getting three-quarters of the way through and rushing to the finish. This was refreshing, to say the least. I haven't read anything created with this kind of care and respect in a long time.

TKW is not a light read, and if you take it to the beach expecting to be able to also keep an eye on the kids and listen to gabbing neighbors, you will be lost. This story changes character hats frequently, and you need to keep up or risk being entirely lost, because each character's experience is closely tied in with others' and will be referenced in both blatent and obscure ways later on. I actually forced myself to put it down when I got tired rather than powering through *just a few more chapters*, because of this, and also because if the author put this much care into creating this tapestry, the least I could do is to be fully present to witness it all as intended.

It is the honest perspectives, and well-crafted relationships between the characters, that kept me reading this wonderfully-written book. No character is treated as lesser, or villified; it is left to the reader to judge these complicated, nuanced creations based on his or her own values, which I appreciated. Jones thought enough of his characters, and readers, to know that all he had to do was lay out the facts, and let them speak for themselves.

Rating: five stars. An excellent, multi-dimensional work of modern literature that feeds the mind.

Review: Night Road, by Kristin Hannah

I chose to read Kristin Hannah's newest book, Night Road, based on the fact that I was still in light-reading mode and had enjoyed Firefly Lane well enough. Plus, it happened to be sitting on the shelf at the library when I got there.

NR is the story of a foster child, Lexi, her shy best friend, Mia, Mia's popular twin brother, Zach and their overzealous helicopter mother, Jude, with the novel's plot spilled out alternately by Lexi and Jude. I'm not going to go too much further into the plot, because I'm guessing that you can already see at least partly where this is going. While there is one event that is slightly surprising, the rest of it is so predictable that I wanted to scream. In fact, there are whole sections of this book that I'm sure I've read somewhere else, SKIP THIS NEXT PART IF YOU PLAN TO READ THE BOOK

particularly the part where Lexi pleads guilty and goes to prison out of guilt for a car accident - I've read that same thing somewhere before - Jodi Piccoult, maybe? it's going to drive me crazy trying to figure that out

SAFE TO COME BACK NOW

My point is, the story is utterly predictable, and that was part of its downfall. Young love, disaster, self-loathing, martyrdom, personal awakenings, redemption, the end. The characters were also just tired stereotypes, Jude in particular. Really, though, the biggest downfall of the book was in the last quarter, where things just perfectly fall into place after becoming ridiculously screwed up. Hannah skips whole years of the characters' lives, and then doesn't do a great job at reeling the reader back into caring about who they've become. I believe that the story would have benefitted greatly from chapters told by Zach, particularly, since he plays a major role in the story and yet we know very little about his inner thoughts. In addition, had it been condensed into something more concise, and then had more depth added to the characters in the last quarter of the story, plus a less tied-with-a-bow ending, it might have been pretty good.

So, it doesn't take a genius to see that I'm not a big fan of this book. It started out well, and I found Lexi's character in particular interesting, but then the whole thing devolved into formulaic writing, and I crawled through the last (and utterly unbelievable) part of the story, almost just to see how bad it would get. It got pretty bad, people. That having been said, Kristin Hannah is an immensely popular writer, and I think whether you like this story or not will depend on what you look for in a story; if you *like* this formula, or you don't read a large number of books (and thus aren't tired of it), then you'll probably enjoy the story. If you do read a lot though, or like variety in your materials, this is one to skip unless you're on the beach and probably will be mostly skimming.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars. An initially interesting novel that turns into a rehash of tired character and plot ideas.

Review: I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections, by Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron's latest semi-memoir, I Remember Nothing..., is another collection of rememberances and commentaries based on her experiences. I enjoyed reading her last collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, so this was one of the first things I downloaded onto my Nook.

The shorts in this collection are more serious than I remember 'Neck' being. My two favorites are also the longest in the collection. The first, 'Journalism, A Love Story', details Ephron's experiences in getting into writing in a time when women were, at most, copy editors. Her words brought to life images of dimly lit, smoky meeting rooms, clandestine affairs between all-powerful bosses and female underlings, and the determination of a young woman to shove past it all and become Something. In the second, 'The Legend', she discusses her mother's alcoholism and her need to discover if the greatest story her mother ever told her, about how she threw a famous actress out of a dinner party for insinuating that one couldn't be a mother and a professional. You hope fervently that the story will be true, that Ephron will have this one pure memory of her mother's fierceness and veracity that will shine through the murkiness of addiction and professional loss.

Other stories detail the painfulness of aging and losing relstionships that you know will never be replaced. This, for me, was the hardest story to read, as I'm currently seeing several older people in my life struggling with this same issue, and recently lost a woman who was like a second grandmother to me growing up. Ephron's ability to intertwine her wry wit into a difficult topic, making it readable without being overwhelmingly depressing, is a credit to her storytelling ability.

However, this book was not as enjoyable to me as its predecessor. It felt a little like a do-over, since this was the exact same format she used before, and the stories were admittedly less humorous and engaging. It felt at times that Ephron was reaching for material, which may have been the case, as this collection is fairly short at about 150 pages. It very much has the feel of an NPR interview; if you think you would enjoy listening to Diane Rehm interview Nora Ephron, this would be a good choice for you. I might re-read my favorite portions again, since it's inside my Nook and will be with me all the time, but if it wasn't, I probably wouldn't go to the effort.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. A decent collection of personal stories, some witty and engaging, some not as much.