Guilt and Rage: Steve Niles' Graphic Novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath

"It's just horrible what people are capable of doing to one another." -Steve Niles, 28 Days Later: The Aftermath

Steve Niles' 28 Days Later:
The Aftermath

Sometimes, our best intentions backfire to cause harm where we hoped to prevent it.  Sometimes, we have too little faith in the world, in God, in our natures, and our attempts to overcome or set these things aside lead us to fall.

Sometimes, being sorry isn't enough.

Steve Niles' graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath follows several stories that fill in the details of what happened to cause the deadly zombie apocalypse depicted in the film 28 Days Later and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later.  The origin of the "Rage" virus that, in the movies, causes human beings to viciously attack one another with unbelievable strength and singularity of purpose is explained, and, as is sometimes the case, the combination of good intentions coupled with ambition is to blame.  The different sections of the text build three different stories that converge in the end to form a fairly pessimistic but satisfying conclusion; I wouldn't necessarily have hoped the story would end the way it did, but I can't think of a more appropriate way for it to have ended, either.

I have to qualify this entry by saying I have never been a huge fan of zombie books or movies.  That's somewhat ironic, considering how often such stories are meant to be metaphors for conformity, consumerism, all-consuming ideology, and other ideas I generally like to read about.  I did like Max Brooks' World War Z, but that book was much less about zombies and much more about how human beings react to and treat one another in the face of significant disasters.  But I felt that, if I was going to focus on horror this year, I had to slip at least one zombie book in, and it also gave me

The shadowy world of 28 Days Later: The Aftermath

the opportunity to get in a graphic novel--something I thought (and I was right!) would prove interesting

given the topic.  Illustrated by three different artists, each section has a slightly different feel or tone that reflects the events and emotions of that particular story, and the way they come together is entirely fitting and believable, juxtaposing different sides of the same event.

I haven't seen the 28 Days movies but was told that reading this book first would actually fill in some of the (intentional) gaps in the films, and, from the synopses of the movies I've read, I can see why.  Part of the appeal of the 28 Days movies is the sense of disinformation, of an overwhelming unawareness about what's happening in a city the characters have known their entire lives.  Like the movies released at the end of the most recent Battlestar Gallactica series, I'm never sure if I want to watch or read such pieces chronologically as the events in the stories occur, or if I want to trust the artists to reveal what readers need when they need it. 

Have you read any other graphic novel episodes or adaptations of books or movies?  Let me know which you enjoyed best--I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading.

An Apocalypse 6000 Years in the Making: Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned

"I was paralyzed.  I stood beside her, lest one of them get close to her.  But they didn't have a chance.  This was beyond nightmare, beyond the stupid horrors to which I'd been a party all of my accursed life." -Anne Rice, Queen of the Damned

The conclusion to Anne Rice's Vampire
Chronicles, Queen of the Damned

I just finished reading Anne Rice's The Queen of the Damned, the last book in her Vampire Chronicles, and I am still reeling from it.  This is the first time I've actually read anything by Rice, one of the trailblazers in vampire fiction, and while I have seen the movie version of her Interview with the Vampire, reading her is an entirely different experience.  The recent (and somewhat waning) interest in vampire books like Twilight and Vampire Academy hasn't seemed to lead many I know back to Rice's books, and I now, at least in part understand why: While the newer breed of books might more appropriately be classified as vampire romance or supernatural suspense and action, The Queen of the Damned is true horror in its most shocking and raw form.

After 6000 years in hibernation, the being Akasha--the original vampiress and mother/queen of all vampires--is awakened by, of all things, a rock concert being performed by Lestat, a vampire featured in Interview and The Vampire Lestat (proving, apparently, the rule that "if it's too loud, you're too old").  Given renewed existence, the ancient Egyptian "Queen of the Damned" plots to rule the world by ridding it of most mortal males and subjugating those who remain to her all-powerful will by forcing them to serve her congregation of human women and lesser vampires.  Recently, however, several individuals both living and undead have been dreaming of red-headed twin sisters--women who may provide the key to destroying Akasha permanently and delivering both humans and vampires from her terrifying wrath.  Simultaneously the story of a present-day threat by the ultimate undead and a revelation of ancient vampire lore, Queen of the Damned is a frightening, gory, and thrilling end to a trilogy whose first two books I now have to go back and read.

Of all the horror I've read this year, I've yet to encounter a book that fits the genre's typical description as fully as Queen.  Most of the books I've read have involved ghosts or other such beings whose presences, though blood-chilling (especially when you're reading late at night in a quiet house that creaks and rattles in the wind), aren't physically harmful.  In fact, one recurring concept in many of the books I've read--The

Akasha from the film adaptation of
Queen of the Damned

Lovely Bones, Far Far Away, Shade--is the inability of the dead to physically affect the world from which they have been cast out.  In Queen, however, not only humans, but supernatural beings themselves are at risk of terrifying and uncontrollable physical harm--and not just of having their blood forcibly drawn.  There's one twenty-page passage about three-quarters of the way through the book where I, admittedly weak of stomach, had to stop and take a break because of how intense and gory it got.  Of course, if intensely gory is your thing, you need to read this book.

I much enjoyed the sense of climax that carried through the entire book, and only wish I'd read the other two Vampire Chronicles books first.  I've read that The Vampire Lestat ends on a huge cliffhanger, and I'm somewhat disappointed I won't feel that suspense if I do go back and read it.  I've also read that the film version diverges greatly from the book, leaves out multiple (and multiple rather important) characters, and generally might be best described as having been inspired by rather than based on the book.

Have you gotten hooked on vampire fiction?  Do you think the sub-genre has played itself out?  Let me know via comment, and let me know if you'd consider reading Rice's work.  She is, compared to others I've read, the "Queen" of the form.

Happy reading.

A Less-than-Senseless Crime in Neil Jordan's Shade

"Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.  But men have killed for love, endlessly." Neil Jordan, Shade

Shade by Neal Jordan

Throughout her childhood, Nina Hardy was aware of a woman's presence around her family's home, a shade who haunted the vast grounds and watched over the girl and her companions.  As she grew up, became an actress, and took charge of the family estate, the men she grew up with went off to the Great War and returned scarred and vulnerable.  But the shade remained a presence in their minds.

It is only after her horrific murder and the discovery that, as a ghost, she can move back and forth freely through time that Nina sees her own image reflected in the eyes of her childhood self and realizes that she, all along, was the ghost that haunted the grounds.

I recently finished Neil Jordan's stunning novel Shade, a highly poetic and intricate text that, like Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Tom McNeil's Far Far Away, places a first-person narrator in an omniscient role and allows her to examine her life as a whole without being able to influence the events or outcomes.  Like Sebold's novel, Shade begins with a graphic (far more raw and graphic, actually, than The Lovely Bones) description of the narrator's murder at the hands of a man with whom she is familiar, her childhood friend George.  From there, however, the two stories diverge. While The Lovely Bones is primarily a story about the aftermath of Susie Salmon's death, Shade is primarily a story about what led to Nina's, going back as far as her parents' meeting and her own birth and examining not only the events of her death, but the more painful episodes of her life and the lives of her acquaintances. Throughout the book, the narrator attempts to understand the events that led up to her death and to discover the impetus behind George's actions, and as the truth of George's motivations are revealed, what seemed senseless acquires a chilling clarity that causes the reader to reevaluate the crime.

Jordan directed the film Interview
with The Vampire

An Oscar-winning filmmaker who directed Interview with the Vampire (a movie adaptation of a book in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, the series that includes the book Queen of the Damned), Jordan writes in a style that is highly detailed and visual.  Take the following lines for example, where the narrator describes a section of the river near her home, where a young girl of "surpassing beauty" had drowned:

"There were long tendrils of seaweed beneath the water which rippled with the moving tide.  And looking down on them, she could well imagine a long bed hair beneath the shifting river, the young girl of surpassing beauty still beneath it, the waters perpetually washing her ever-growing hair" (p. 17).

Shade is filled with similar such images and descriptions that simultaneously reveal the physical environment and the characters' psychological states in a way that connects the two perfectly.

Not only was the book a frightening examination of the human psyche, but the story behind how I found the title is pretty frightening itself (and, in hindsight, pretty funny as well).  Having put my then six-month-old daughter to sleep one night, I pulled out some professional articles about horror fiction that I was reading for a grad school class.  I get my best work done early in the morning and just before bed at night, when the house is quiet and calm, and as I settled in at the dining room table the hush of the house and the darkness in the adjacent rooms set a spooky mood for my reads.  I was reading an article about autothanographical fiction that mentioned Shade when, suddenly, I heard the clang of metal in the kitchen.  I thought perhaps it was my cat playing around in a cabinet--until I heard the noise again and, looking through the doorway between the rooms, saw a hideous black claw appear from behind the oven.  In horror, I jumped out of my chair and ran to close the door just as another claw, then a black, winged shape shot out from behind the oven and began whirling through the air.

Somehow, a bat had found its way into our house.

After the police left--taking the bat with them to be tested, of course, for rabies--I knew two things: firstly, that I would have to call and leave another thank you for the officers who caught the creature, and secondly, that I had to read Jordan's book.

If you're up for a challenging and poetic read, pick up Shade and let me know what you think.  I'd love to hear about it.

Happy reading.

Past and Present Collide in Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

"When I was fifteen, an extraordinary and terrible thing happened, and there was only Before and After." -Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's
Home for Peculiar Children

Literature is filled with characters who must contend with the darker elements of their pasts.  But what if the horrors of a loved one's past literally began to haunt you, appearing not only in your dreams, but in your waking hours?

I just finished one of the best and most uniquely formatted books I've read this year: Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  In the book, sixteen year-old Jacob Portman, an underachiever whose wealthy family seems to both blame and enable his negative behaviors, loses his beloved grandfather in a strange and shocking incident.  Close to his grandfather Abraham since an early age, Jacob had always loved the stories the old man would tell about his childhood, which he spent in a Welsh orphanage, and the strange pictures of the peculiarly gifted children who lived there.  Pictures of a small, skinny boy holding a giant boulder over his head.  Of a girl hovering inches above the ground (the photo that graces the book's cover).  Of a suit that seemed to be worn by a person without a head--an invisible boy, Jacob's grandfather said.  And when asked why he had left Poland and gone to live in the orphanage, Abraham claimed he'd had to flee "the monsters" which Jacob's father later told him were actually the Nazis.

The "invisible boy" from
Abraham's orphanage

Jacob would have taken his grandfather's death hard even if he had not seen what he saw the night Abraham died: a monster, though not the kind his father had described.  And he may have been able to cope if not for the old man's last words, which set Jacob on a journey to discover the true horrors of his grandfather's past--a journey to the mysterious island on which his grandfather had sought refuge and where Jacob would come face to face with the images that had, since his Abraham's death, haunted his nightmares.

The format of Riggs' book is one of the most creative and effective of any book I've ever read.  Throughout the book, Riggs includes bizarre "authentic, vintage found photographs" that have been almost entirely unaltered.  Riggs takes these photographs and weaves them into the heart of the book, building the story around the fictional significance of these peculiar but real pictures.  The hardcover edition prints the photos in color and sepia tones, making them even more real and even more strange, while the paperback prints them in black and white at slightly lesser quality; so, if you purchase the book, I recommend spending the extra to get a hardcover copy (South Elgin High School's library has a least two copies of the hardcover edition to circulate).  Several times, while reading this book at night just before bed, I'd turn the page and my blood would run cold when I'd see an image, say, of a girl standing alone next to a pond, but with the image of two girls reflected on the water's surface.  It was exactly the kind of feeling I'd been hoping for when I chose to focus on horror fiction this year!

Riggs weaves in authentic found photographs that, when
viewed closely, chill the reader's blood.

Besides the unique format, I loved Miss Peregrine's for the voice Riggs was able to create.  At times, teenage narrators can come across as sounding somewhat false or more childish than intended (the result, I'm certain, of adults trying to sound younger than they are).  But Jacob, despite his slacker behavior, sounds intelligent, reflective, and real.  Take, for example, Jacob's description of the home in which his grandfather had grow up:

"My grandfather had described it a hundred times, but in his stories the house was always a bright, happy place--big and rambling, yes, but full of light and laughter.  What stood before me now was no refuge from monsters but a monster itself, staring down from its perch on  the hill with vacant hunger.  Trees burst forth from broken windows and skins of scabrous vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a viruss--as if nature itself had waged war against it--but the house seemed unkillable, resolutely upright despite the wrongness of its angles and the jagged teeth of sky visible through sections of the collapsed roof" (83).

Wow.

This is one of my most highly recommended reads, especially considering the sequel, Hollow City (how's that for a title?), was just released.  Have you read Miss Peregrine's or anything like it (if something like it even exists)?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading.

Just Finished! Far Far Away by Tom McNeal

"The dead maid set her hollow eyes on me. 'It all depends on you.'" -Tom McNeal, Far Far Away

Tom McNeal's Far Far Away

A small town.  A girl without parents.  A boy who hears voices.  A ghost with an unknown task.

Disappearances.  Too many, it would seem, to ignore.

I've just finished Tom McNeal's Far Far Away, a National Book Award Finalist and overall one of the creepiest stories I've read in a long time.  Far Far Away is the story of Jeremy Johnson Johnson (his parents, though unrelated, had the same last name), a boy with either a special gift or a terrible curse, depending on who you ask.  Jeremy hears voices--sometimes suddenly, sometimes briefly, sometimes for extended periods of time.  The day his grandfather died, Jeremy heard brief words of encouragement and support.  Long after his mother had run away with an exotic stranger, Jeremy heard words of apology--just before receiving the news his mother had passed away.  And, recently, the same voice has followed him daily, a voice with a thick accent and an odd, eloquent, dated way of speaking: the voice of Jacob Grimm, the long-deceased scholar of German fairy tales. 

Grimm, the book's ghostly narrator, tells the reader early that, though his intentions were good, the story does not necessarily end well.  For within this small town, a Finder of Occasions waits to harm Jeremy.  Grimm believes that, if he can identify this Finder of Occasions, he may be able to escape the Zwischenraum--the between-world in which spirits with unfinished business await the day they can pass into the great beyond.  And although like Jeremy and Jacob many of the town's young people wish to escape the confines of their current situations, too many seem to have "run away" in recent years.  Could their sudden disappearances be the work of the man Jacob seeks, the Finder of Occasions?  What if the man already knows Jeremy, and what if his plans for harming Jeremy are already in motion?

Far Far Away is narrated
by the ghost of Jacob Grimm
 

What if, suddenly and unexpectedly, Jeremy disappeared?

McNeal's book is definitely one of my new favorites.  Jeremy is an incredible character whose pain, up to the final page, is wholly felt by the reader and whose value, despite some poor decisions, we never question.  Similar to Susie in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, Far Far Away's ghostly storyteller is afforded much of the knowledge of a third-person omniscient narrator while actually being connected with the story's events the way typical first-person narrators are.  This allows the events in the story to unfold in a thrilling way only possible with an element of the supernatural, especially considering how the Grimm brother's ghost finds himself in a real-life fairy tale.  Finally, while the presence of Jacob's ghost provides an eerie element from the first page, the book goes from strange to legitimately frightening about two-thirds of the way through.  Just as I began to wonder where the story was headed (not to mention why so many people had described it as "twisted" and "incredibly creepy"), a suspicion I'd held since the beginning but had not quite taken seriously materialized, and I literally said aloud, "Wait, no!"  What suspicion?  You will, of course, have to pick up the book to find out.

As I mentioned, Far Far Away is up for the National Book Award, and the winner of of that award is due to be announced in May.  For whatever reason, I tend not to read books right when they come out, even when they're written by my favorite authors.  Perhaps I'm an simply an unwavering supporter of the idea that a reader must find the right book at the right time in his or her life (as soon as Dave Eggers asks me what book I feel like reading at this particular moment in my life and then plans, writes, and publishes that book before my mind or feelings change, I'll buy the first edition; excepting that, I'll likely wait until something strikes my fancy).  But I happened to have Far Far Away recommended to me not long after its release, and I'm now waiting anxiously to see how it fares in May.  A professor of mine reads all the books up for the big awards every year, and I can see now how exciting that could be.  New reading goal?  Quite possibly...

Pick up McNeal's book and let me know what you think, or, as always, feel free to recommend something else you think I may enjoy!

Happy reading.

Recently Read! The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

"I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it." -Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones

I recently finished reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, an incredibly unique book in which the teenage narrator, who describes somewhat graphically her brutal murder in the first pages, tells the story of the aftermath of her death, her personal struggle to accept her new existence, her family and friends' attempts to cope with the tragedy, and her killer's efforts to evade the community's suspicion.  Published in 2002 by Back Bay Books, The Lovely Bones is at different turns heartfelt, humorous, and rather creepy, and is sure to appeal to anyone interested in horror or suspense.

Walking home from school on a cold afternoon, Susie Salmon is approached in a barren cornfield near her home by her family's neighbor, a man she doesn't know well but whom she's seen often enough.  Comfortable in her small town and unsuspecting of the man, Susie follows him into an underground he's constructed and which he seems excited to show someone.  Her untimely end sends her spirit shooting off toward a heaven that is unlike what anyone had described--a place comfortable enough, where simply wanting something makes it appear, but without the resolution and happiness Susie would have imagined heaven bringing.  Able to look down upon, but not--at least yet--interact with the world below her, she watches her sister grow into the woman Susie should have been, her mother and father grow distant, and the boy she liked grow closer to the girl she may have touched as her soul screamed out of the world.

As a soul freed from her body, however, she is also able to see human lives as wholes, from their beginnings to their current place in time, and she learns the horrors her killer had inflicted on other victims.  Unable to reveal the truth of his life to others, Susie hopes someone else can discover the man's true identity and past before yet another--perhaps someone close to her--becomes his victim.

My favorite aspect of The Lovely Bones has to be the unique concept, which some have referred to as a sub-genre called autothanatographical fiction.  If autobiography is the self (auto) writing (graph) about his or her life (bio), then autothanatography is the self writing about his or her own death (thanatos).  This gives the narrator a unique perspective on his or her life that is very different from that of other narrators, who are limited to telling the story of their lives up to the point at which they're writing.  Not only does Susie focus on the events unfolding on Earth after hear death, but she spends considerable time analyzing her own life--what it was, what it meant, and what it could have been.  Several other books, including one I have on my Someday List, Shade by Neil Jordan, can be placed in this same sub-genre, and I have a sneaking suspicion the category may become one of my go-to places for new reads.

Alice Sebold, author

 

I picked up The Lovely Bones not only because it fit into the horror genre on which I'd chosen to focus on this year, but because many of my students had read it previously and had always recommended it.  I have a habit of placing such recommendations in my to-read pile and never quite getting to them because there's so much else I "have to read first," but I'm glad I finally picked it up and hope you might enjoy it as well.  The story is influenced by Sebold's own horrific experience at the age of 18, when she herself was assaulted as a college freshman.  I have not read Sebold's memoir of the tragedy, Lucky, but am told it is an even more gripping tale whose focus, rather than on the suspense created in The Lovely Bones, is on the author's struggle to reclaim her life.  I'd be interested in seeing how the two compared.

If you have read any of Sebold's works or anything similar you enjoyed, why not leave a comment and let me know what you thought? I'd love to hear about it.

Happy reading.

Irish Poet Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013

"But I've no spade to follow men like them. /  Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I'll dig with it." -Seamus Heaney, "Digging"

Irish poet Seamus Heaney

Last week, Irish poet Seamus Heaney passed away at the age of 74. Sometimes referred to as a "father figure" in Irish poetry, Heaney's work is at the same time beautiful and accessible. He always reminded me a little of an Irish Robert Frost, perhaps because of his clear style and his frequent references to natural or pastoral images.

BBC ran a number of stories on his life and death, but the best testament to him is his obituary, which not only talks about his life but includes some representative lines from his poems (a few of which I've quoted above). Besides his original work, Heaney did a pretty fantastic translation of Beowulf back in 2001, setting the original Old English epic side by side with his version of the text and keeping very true to the rhythm, meter, and poetry of the piece.

Check out some of Heaney's poetry and celebrate the life and career of this incredible writer!