Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Becker, R. 2010 | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
"A witty and unexpected take on the zombie genre; I had a great time."
--Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels
Subtitled "A Zombie Memoir," Brains looks at America's favorite walking-dead flesh-eaters from an audaciously original and deliciously gruesome new perspective. Debut author Robin Becker blazes new ground with this story of former college professor-cum-sentient zombie Jack Barnes, who recounts the tale of the resistance he organized in the wake of the recent zombie apocalypse. World War Z; Shaun of the Dead; Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies... Becker tops them all with Brains--a witty, tasty treat for anyone who every spent a midnight glued to a classic George A. Romero zombie epic!
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Becker's slender debut novella is an unusual take on the zombie genre: part Grapes of Wrath, part postmodern memoir. A virus outbreak turns millions of people into mindless zombies, and the remaining humans declare war on the undead. Zombified English professor Jack Barnes discovers that he has retained his memories and his consciousness. Joined by several other sentient zombies, Barnes sets off to find the virus's creator in hopes of presenting a treatise on zombie civil rights. Barnes's dogged entitlement and self-centeredness make him both uninteresting and unbearable, and while Becker's writing is crisp, the plot meanders like its characters, consisting of little more than cannibalistic feasts and tin-eared literary and pop culture references ("Hell is other zombies"; "Perhaps life as a zombie is better than no life at all"). (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Since being cornered and bitten in his home by a swarm of zombies, former college professor Jack Barnes has found a new love: brains. Not just any brains, but bubbly, bewitching, bedazzling brains. While he may be a zombie (he ate his wife shortly after being turned), a classic, arms-outstretched, shambling zombie he is not. He has something special that the rest of the infected don't: self-awareness. That and his ability to write convince him to go to Chicago to find the scientist who created the virus responsible for zombification and, he hopes, end the war between the living and the dead. En route he meets a few like-minded undead compatriots, all with varying degrees of sentience, to help him on his quest: Joan, once a nurse, who is particularly skilled at patching up body parts; Guts, a young man who can still run with the best of them; pregnant Eve, whom Jack falls for after biting off her finger; and Ros, a spokesman of sorts, since he's still able to talk. Becker's humorous first-person narrative will have readers rooting for the zombie crew, and she keeps the action moving at breakneck pace. Smart, funny, weirdly uplifting, Brains is a most welcome addition to zombie lit.--Orellana, Carlos Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
A zombie outbreak in the United States turns those who catch the virus into the walking dead, rotting and mindless in their pursuit of flesh-particularly brains-to appease their insatiable hunger. Only Jack Barnes, an English professor, retains his intellectual faculties, a fact that places him high on the new food chain and low in his own self-esteem. Becker's first novel takes a gruesome cliche of the horror genre and turns it on its head, producing a sharp, entertainingly funny, and viscerally shocking story of "every-zombie," an odyssey of the damned. VERDICT Though decidedly not for the squeamish, this slim novel should attract fans of shock horror as well as dark humor. [For more zombie fiction, see Amelia Beamer's The Loving Dead, reviewed on p. 76.-Ed.] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.