Review - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Title: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Author: Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith

This was my final Christmas gift book of the year [Thanks, Leah] and the one about which I had the greatest curiosity. How could Pride and Prejudice be turned into a zombie story? I simply had to find out.

First, the description:

It's Pride and Prejudice. With Zombies.

Hmmm. Not good enough? Well, I have to tell you, that really is good enough if you know the story of Pride and Prejudice. But if you don't, or if you want a slightly longer-winded version, here it is.

In England, in the early nineteenth century, Elizabeth Bennet is one of five daughters. Being a member of the landed class, but not nearly wealthy enough to be considered an advantageous choice as a wife, Elizabeth must navigate her way through society, remaining a proper young woman, while protecting the country from the dead who rise again to attack, eat, or at least infect the living. Because her father had no sons, he has had his daughters trained in the deadly arts, and Elizabeth is well known in and around her home estate of Longbourne as a first class slayer of Satan's Army. Yet, as dangerous as those who have been stricken are, the true difficulties in Elizabeth's life arise from her meeting a most taciturn and arrogant man, Mr. Darcy.

I have never read Pride and Prejudice. I have seen the film with Keira Knightley in the role of Elizabeth, and I must tell you, I recognized the story immediately as exactly the same -- except insofar as it had to change in order to make Elizabeth a warrior, and to include the existence of Zombies in the everyday life of the early 1800s.

The book still talks like this:

"If you were aware," said Elizabeth, "of the very great disadvantage to us all which must arise from the public notice of Lydia's unguarded and imprudent manner -- nay which has already arisen from it, I am sure you would judge differently in the affair."

That is exactly the language of Pride and Prejudice I heard in the film, and I suspect it's very close to what Jane Austen originally wrote.

For the most part, Grahame-Smith wove the terrible existence of zombies into the original tale very believably. Oh, there were a few points when it was simply too humorous to be realistic, but that is the attraction of this book. When a neighbor at a gathering is unceremoniously grabbed and eaten, a typical zombie movie would have great fear and battles taking place. In this book, the zombies are dispatched with little narrative, and almost no mention is made of the victim. When Elizabeth is challenged to a "sparring match" it is not done with blunted weapons. These scenes would have played out differently if zombie infestation were real, but the entertainment value, from a comedic viewpoint, is much higher this way. It's a romance, but it's a comedy as well. And it has zombies!

By the middle of the book, I really was wondering how the right characters were going to get their due, meet their matches, and overcome the pride and prejudice of which the title speaks. I don't know if Jane Austen had a sense of humor or not, but if she did, I think she'd be happy with this posthumous collaboration.

I know I am.

Who wants to borrow it?