Book Review: John Ajvide Lindqvist’s ‘Handling the Undead’
Book Review: Handling the Undead (2010)
Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist
Thomas Dunne Books
Release Date: September 28, 2010
Review by Marc Patterson
For fans of horror fiction John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 novel Let The Right One In is a hard act to follow. It seems redundant to even need to say it, but he’s had two films created from his novel since and now, in line with the recent release of Let Me In Lindqvist releases his own follow-up novel, Handling the Undead. While “undead” is a specific word in the title, Lindqvist does not return to the land of vampires but takes on a new monster of horror with zombies, creating a 363 page novel that delivers some mixed feelings both for the characters in the book and those of us who would read its pages.
The story is centered around a handful of individuals and their particular stories in the aftermath of an odd electrical disturbance in modern day Stockholm. This freak electrical storm sparks something that brings the dead back to life. The dead start to rise from mortuaries, cemeteries, and other places they may be lying in eternal rest. Now the living are faced with the dead, and their own dead, dead family members, relatives, friends. Lindqvist explores this phenomenon under his unique style and way of looking at both human relationships and modern monsters, twisting the tale to create something oddly touching and human.
One of the first things to note for fans of the grotesque and undead is that these are not the brain munching monsters of Romero’s creation. These are literally dead rotting corpses brought back to some sort of semblance of life and reunited with the society they used to be a part of. The result is often not a pretty one. Who would expect it to be? I used this word in my review of Alfredson’s film adaptation of Let The Right One In, calling it “poignant”, and in a word, that’s just what this novel is. Each of the stories bears a stamp of gut wrenching – and at times near tearful – emotion but oddly fails to manage to capture the essence of hopelessness and of loss, as say Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. For me it didn’t get more real than the story of the mourning grandfather who has dug up his grandson. Disturbing, yet touching. And one wonders how this could even be both at once.
Tonally I found the story to be on the level of Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro’s The Strain, which is to say it takes its time moving through various scene and character set-ups, stretching the patience of the reader, but always in a balanced way that keeps one reading, or at least coming back to the book after countless interruptions from life’s pesky distractions. Some may dislike this slow methodical approach to the stories, and some may dislike the fact that the individual character stories within the novel aren’t connected except for the “event” at large. I didn’t mind it so much. I’m a big fan of short fiction and for me this novel read like a series of short stories woven into each other, even if done clumsily at times.
It’s tough to read a book about zombies and decree it not to be horror, but that’s what my ultimate verdict is. But then when you really think about it, neither was Let the Right One In. This isn’t a bad thing. Fans of zombies should rejoice to find a fresh voice in a stagnant genre. If you’re looking for something different in a genre dominated by cheap paperback knockoffs then Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead should quickly rise to the top of your short list.
