John Ajvide Linqvist : Handling the undead

Sweden has been hit with a weird medical happening over the last two months. Due to excessive heat levels and energy spikes, the dead seem to have returned to life. Well, it's not like all of the deceased Swedes have returned to life. I'd say a good estimate would put it around 10% of the deceased population has returned. Several citizens mark this resurrection with a degree of horror and hope. The recently widowed, orphaned and general grieving are hoping that this means their loved ones will return hope. Others fear what sort of horrors that the walking dead bring with them.

 The undead of this book aren't ghouls, but they aren't normal. These undead are shells of their former selves who are trying to return to their past lives. What makes this more of a tease is that so many grieving individuals are seeing these creatures and wanting their loved ones to come back.

The horror begins, as we find two grieving individuals that are desperate to be visited by a relative zombie. When the grandfather Mahler learns of the dead's return, he gets the idea that his deceased grandson might be alive in his coffin. Fighting against reason, he breaks into the local graveyard and begins to unearth the eight year old child. The readers get to follow along, as his troubled mind tries to rationalize his actions until he finally breaks the coffin lid. Feeling inside against the exposed bone, he realizes that his grandson hasn't returned as the same child. The sense of disgust and personal horror is what helps to drive the true terror of this work.

Linqvist  slowly weaves together an intelligent, philosophical look at what would happen if the dead were to unnaturally rise from their graves. "Handling the Undead" doesn't really focus on the zombies themselves. Instead, Lindqvist conjures up a simple scenario, and examines how people would react to it -- we see hysteria, suicide, denial, dismissal, religious fervor, and a delusional belief that the zombies can simply go back to their old lives. And he brings up a number of philosophical questions with no easy answers.

In a book filled with subtle, creeping psychological horror, the author also fleshes out his characters beautifully, giving each one a backstory that shapes their current reactions. And he handles each one with compassion, even if they're delusional or twerpy.

Although perhaps a bit slow in the middle, this is a horror novel that transcends its genre by showing what the return of the dead might really mean to those who loved them.

To know more and better:


http://www.amazon.com/Handling-Undead-John-Ajvide-Lindqvist/dp/0312605250
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handling_the_Undead
http://chud.com/articles/articles/25060/1/BOOK-REVIEW-HANDLING-THE-UNDEAD-/Page1.html

John Ajvide Linqvist : Let the right one in

John Ajvide Lindqvist (born 2 december 1968 in Blackeberg, Sweden) is a Swedish writer, mostly of horror novels and short stories. His debut novel Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) a romantic, social realistic vampire horror story published in 2004.

Synopsis: 12-year-old Oskar is an outsider; bullied at school, dreaming about his absentee father, bored with live on a dreary housing estate. One evining he meets his mysteriour neighbour Eli. As a romance blossoms between them, Oskar dicovers Eli's dark secret - she's a 200-year-old vampire, forever frozen in chidhood and condemned to live on a diet of fress blood.

It could very well be another vampire story but the author achieves in fact a disturbing reworkin of the vampire legend, and a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship and loyalty, and shows a vampire both heart-breakingly pathetic and terrifying.

The book is a bevy of contradictions: beauty and horror, young love and violence, innocence and guilt. The fact that it works at all is impressive, being as it is part love story, horror novel and social drama.

After this one, I'm reading Handling the Undead. I'll tell you something about this one as soon as I finish it but my first impression is that this one is even a more disturbing and ill-at-ease reading.