Book Review: Pariah
Book Review: Pariah (2010)
Release Date: August 3, 2010
Publisher: Tor Books
Written By: Bob Fingerman
Review By: Kayley Viteo
Here’s the thing about Pariah: it’s a novel about zombies, but it really isn’t about them. It’s not even about the apocalypse that the humans of an Upper East Side walk-up find themselves living in. This is every inch a novel about the capacity for humans to adapt (or in some cases, to really not). What results is perhaps the most amusing, touching, intelligent yet grim and disturbing piece of zombie fiction I’ve read this year, perhaps ever.
All zombie literature focuses on human change in some form or another, but most of it focuses on them after the fact. Meaning, we only see the results, which tend to be guns blazing, adrenaline rush reads. Don’t get me wrong – I love this subset of fiction, it is most of what I tend to read. However, there’s always a part of me that yearns for the focus to be off of the zombies and onto the humans in a real, less fantastic, way. And that is exactly what Pariah is – consider my prescription filled.
Pariah is simple, but still astoundingly complicated because of the relationships of the humans. There isn’t much to the basic plot, except for that the zombie apocalypse has occurred, no help is on the way, and a few residents of New York City are slowly starving and waiting to die – only hopefully not at the hands of the hordes stumbling around below them. It isn’t until a young girl with some sort of immunity to the horde shows up does anything change, and even then everything is still very much the same except everyone is now well-fed and slowly becoming more extreme versions of themselves.
Even though Pariah has none of the guns-blazing adrenaline, there is still tension in the narrative from the very start. Other authors might be masters with zombies, but Fingerman is clearly a master of the human condition in such extreme circumstances. As certain characters grow slowly unhinged in a wonderfully paced manner, the tension is thick to an almost unbearable point. I constantly felt as if I knew what was going to happen, that there was going to a catharsis of some sort, and yet it was almost too much. In fact, the tension in Pariah is much worse than any “normal” zombie novel, exactly because of this focus on the humanity, the exact portrait of which feels so disturbingly on target.
And yet, not all of the characters are bad, of course. Some of them are exactly the same as they were in their lives pre-apocalypse, which again is such a poignant portrait because I feel that’s exactly what would happen. Some people would slide into the best or worst of what they could be, whereas some would simply be exactly who they always are. For certain, Pariah is grim storytelling at its finest, but there is also a sense of realistic hope. You see the worst of humanity (or at least close to it), but you also see the best.
Perfectly paced, wonderfully written, intelligent, creative and an absolutely fantastic read, I cannot recommend Pariah enough. If you’re a regular reader of zombie fiction and you’ve been yearning for a change of pace that matches grimness with wit, this is exactly what you need.
