In Want of Brains: Thoughts on "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"

Me and zombies go way back. They're all the rage now, of course, spawning enough videogames and films to be a healthy sub genre in horror. A more recent development, at least on a mass market scale, is zombie literature. Zombie books have been around for quite some time, but novels like World War Z added a dose of bile into the main stream. I loved that book. So naturally, just hearing the title Pride and Prejudice and Zombies brought unbridled undead glee to my heart and put a drag in my step. The premise was simple, yet brilliant: add zombies to the classic Jane Austen novel.

Up until this point, I hadn't read any Jane Austen. Maybe that's why I only have a minor in creative writing. There's an outside chance I read a short story--did she write those? Whatever the case, I appreciated her stories when loosely adapted into films (like Whit Stillman's Metropolitan), but never got around to actually reading any of her stuff. I'm at the point in life now (finished with school for the time being) where I'm not about to read something I don't want to. I won't go out of my way to read a classic "because I should." I'm reading what I love, and that's that. I happen to love zombies, and I saw this as a perfect chance to kill two birds with one stone. I'll get to fill a sizable gap in my literary references and check out a new piece of zombie writing at the same time.

If only it were that simple. You see, despite the book getting largely positive reviews, I found Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to actually be quite boring and underpopulated with undead. The story of the Bennet sisters and Mr. Darcy is pretty much in tact, and the zombies serve as background noise. The Bennet Sisters all have kung-fu skills acquired in the Orient, and they have a dojo built into their house, but it all feels under utilized. Occasionally the zombies bust through windows or attack the hired help, but they never really interfere with the story. I knew this going into it, that the story was the same and that the style of writing was the same, but I just thought I would enjoy it more.

I guess you could say there needed to be more zombies. While the actual fight scenes in the book were decent, the best part was when one of the characters (I won't spoil it) gets bitten by a zombie and slowly turns without anyone seeming to notice except Elizabeth. This character is living life as a zombie for months and no one says anything. It's funny, but probably not funny enough to carry the rest of the book.

A few weeks back I came across a kid who pulled that book out of his Borders shopping bag and exclaimed "Check this out!" I asked if he was a fan of Jane Austen. He said, "I hate her!" At the time I let it slide, but the truth is, this book is more Jane Austen than anything else. If you do like her, you'll get far more mileage out of this book than I did. If you despise Austen and her style, then you'll have to drag yourself through this paperback. I wouldn't go as far as to say I despise her, so much as I just found her rather dull.

I don't quit books when I start them (well, I did once: Texas-Israeli War: 1999 by Howard Waldrop), and I finished this one too. It was a noble experiment, and one that has made co-author Seth Grahame-Smith a very rich man; it made Jane Austen nothing, of course. This experiment is already inspiring plenty of sequels and imitators, all sure to attempt the same schtick: take a literary classic and sprinkle in some zombies, or monsters, or vampires, or whatever. The formula is now established, but I have to wonder if the zombie+literature micro genre has any legs... or brains.

In the end, I judged a book by its awesome, awesome cover. Just like that Texas-Israeli War book. That one had tanks and horses on it. This one had a zombie. I hear they're already planning on adapting this into a movie, which means, like other Austen adaptations, that I'll enjoy it on the big screen.