It Takes a Village . . . To Die So a Person Can Swim: The Book List

Zombies. Everyone around here knows how I feel about zombies!

So much so that I bought Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth, a young adult novel about—what else?—zombies. I had heard, from various reliable sources (read: not the reviews on Amazon) that the novel was well-written and entertaining. I started reading Saturday and finished on Sunday morn. My overall impression?

I love zombies. I can suspend my disbelief for them. But I can’t quite suspend my disbelief that much.

And remember, people: if it’s a book list at Sonnet 87, there’re spoilers.

The book is written for a younger audience, but to me that doesn’t excuse the a) flimsy plot, 2) the repetitive writing, and III) the characters who fail to grow or evolve (and sometimes even devolve). The single mindedness of the main character, Mary, is astonishing—I know she’s young, but does she have to be such a life-endangering ninny? I understand wanting to see the world beyond what you know, and I definitely see how pondering what’s beyond your boundaries can drive a young person to do foolhardy things, but when you have ravenous hoards of flesh-eating reanimated dead around you? Maybe you should struggle to be a little more rational instead of letting your spirit run free.

What drove me absolutely nuts was the timeline for the events in this book. It’s unclear at first, but this takes place generations after what the characters call “The Return.” In fact, the word “centuries” is used, and I’m trusting that the main character, Mary, knows what a century is even though she’s apparently unfamiliar with Roman numerals. Late in the book, Mary finds a snapshot of the New York skyline, so we’re definitely past the 21st century. Mary’s village is surrounded by a chain-link fence that’s apparently enough to keep out zombies (I’m guessing that the sheer number of zombies can’t knock down the fence because their numbers are diminished? Right? But then Mary says that zombies don’t decay!); “They” (us, maybe?) left enough material to keep the chain-link fence reinforced, so that’s been lasting for centuries? Mary mentions that the fence is rusting in places, which seems to me that of course there are weak links that will eventually be breached—why does everyone in the village act like the zombies pawing at the fence aren’t that big of a deal? And if it’s been centuries yet fresh zombies keep coming (they show signs of wear from the elements, but they don’t decay, which makes no sense to me), doesn’t it stand to reason that there must be more people out there falling victim to the zombies? Yet most of the village thinks that it’d be impossible for there to be more people. Only Mary believes! And she wants to see the ocean.

Has Mary (and by Mary I mean the author) not read World War Z or The Zombie Survival Guide? The ocean is a freakin’ death trap, full of zombies that wander in and don’t come out for years (and bite you during your moonlight swim).

Mary laments throughout the book that her village has been a poor keeper of history, but this seems like a cop-out on the author’s part—it’s like Ryan couldn’t come up with a coherent history (hell, the zombies are barely coherent as mentioned above) and instead let poor knowledge transmission be the culprit. The controlling religious order, the Sisterhood, closely guards history and knowledge beyond the village’s fences, but Sister Tabitha (Mary’s primary antagonist in the first half of the book) strikes me less religiously fervent and more practical—I’m not saying holding back on historical knowledge is a good thing, but tucking away fanciful notions of the ocean might be a good idea in view of a new threat (which comes in the form of an Outsider, Gabrielle, that the Sisterhood turns into a zombie in order to study her for unknown reasons). It just doesn’t make sense to hide away information and technologies that would allow people to survive such a flimsy barrier between life and death. Complacency in the face of a constant siege is idiotic—a breach could always happen, and preparing people for the worst is the only way to survive. That everyone in this book is such a little follower and can’t come up with a basic plan for survival is infuriating. They’re being relentlessly attacked by zombies all their lives—why does that seem to be only background noise to Mary?

And the Gabrielle that I mentioned above—she represents hope outside the fence of Mary’s village, but why Mary feels such a connection to her is baffling. But it’s there, since Mary imagines Gabrielle was a girl who dared to leave her village (it was actually overrun) and is her inspiration to push forth. (Minor sequel spoiler: Mary’s daughter in the sequel is named Gabry—I think this connection is a bit creepy and wonky, naming your daughter after the person who brings about the downfall of your village.)

And it’s apparently too much to have everyone be up to snuff on weapons training—the kids of the village get trained in archery, but beyond that Mary seems pretty useless in her fighting style unless the best defense is wildly swinging an ax or a scythe. Mary survives only through others’ sacrifices, not through her own ingenuity or a clever stratagem. She just wants to see the ooooooceeeeannnn!

Sorry. Can’t sympathize with a whiny little brat when her friends are dying while following her to her dreams. Is this supposed to be a take on how communities don’t prepare children for the challenges of the real world? If so, it fails because this is about basic survival, not testing scores. When everything else crumbles, one’s slightly more important than the other, but the book fails to tell me why the idea of survival isn’t approached with more seriousness by everyone in the novel.

The book ultimately prizes the individual over the community, but it takes the death of the community for the individual to triumph. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a tall order to see one person succeed.

If you want to read a great young adult book about the triumph of the human spirit over evil, and that deals with death in a much more sophisticated manner, and still recognizes the persevering will of the individual but acknowledges that this can’t happen without individual sacrifice and the bonds of a community, read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. And zombies? World War Z. Still haven’t found something to top that.

Onto the book list:

Finished:

1) The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
2) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
3) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peal Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4) Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde
5) Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
6) Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
7) Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
8) Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
9) Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer
10) The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton
11) Under the Dome by Stephen King
12) Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge by Eleanor Herman
13) Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman
14) The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez
15) The Road by Cormac McCarthy
16) The Hidden by Tobias Hill
17) The Best American Short Stories 2009: Edited by Alice Sebold & Heidi Pitlor (Series Editor)
18) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Translated by Reg Keeland)
19) The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Re-read:

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Currently Reading:

1) The Grift by Debra Ginsberg
2) Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Husband or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
2) Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy