bugpowderdust

Lindqvist received a lot of attention earlier this year for the film Let The Right One In, for which he contributed the script from his original novel. That was an unusual vampire story, as much about an unlikely friendship between two outsiders as it was biting necks. In Handling The Undead he twists another horror trope, the zombie, and gives us a far more radical reworking than his earlier book delivered.
The zombies in this novel are neither Romero-esque shamblers or their fastrunning 21st century upgrades, intent on brainzzz with an unstoppable appetite for flesh. These are purely and simply the dead returned to…not life, exactly, but to some kind of animation.
Something has caused the dead of Stockholm to rise, and we follow the consequences through three bereaved families. A wife and granddaughter, a husband and son, and a grandfather and mother are all reunited with their loved ones, though the undead have little recognition of them, hardly any cognitive abilities and poor motor skills. They are little more than unresponsive bags of meat, but the differing way the families deal with their return is the heart of the novel. What would you do if the walking corpse of your grandfather appeared at your front door? Welcome him home? Reject it in horror? Wonder if this animated flesh can really be your relative?
Like all the best genre writers, Lindqvist uses the fantastic to examine our mundane lives. He has reinvented the zombie as a reification of grief, a physical manifestation of the loss and heartbreak felt on bereavement. There are a few plot holes and threads left hanging that it would be spoilerish to describe, but overall he has produced one of the most emotionally affecting books I’ve read in a long time. Highly recommended.