Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I must admit that I was hesitant to read this.  I mean, I love Pride and Prejudice, I’ve long had a soft spot in my literary heart for Austen and the Regency romance, and Pride and Prejudice has to be my favorite Austen novel.  And man do I ever love me some zombies.  But somehow the combination seemed like a little too much of a gimmick.  And I just wasn’t sure if anyone could do justice to Pride and Prejudice while inserting zombies into the mix.

Seth Grahame-Smith did an excellent job of fitting zombies into the lives of the Bennett sisters.  He skillfully worked a whole background of a longstanding war against the undead into the story.  And a lot of the humor of the story, for me, came from that backdrop which he had created.  I  found enjoyment in the small additions such as Sussex becoming Section Six East in transformed fortress of London.  According to Grahame-Smith it was acceptable for the nobility and gentry to send their sons and daughters to study under Eastern masters in order to learn the “deadly arts” to use in defense of his majesty’s realm.  I was a little taken aback by the disciplined, katana wielding, violent Bennett girls.   It was hard for me to imagine my familiar little heroine Elizabeth Bennett cutting down hordes of zombies while worrying over her younger sisters’ improprieties and her own unhappy marriage prospects.  Yet there was a consistency in the storytelling that quickly won me over, and left me wondering how else this familiar story was going to be transformed.  One of my favorite changes had to be from Elizabeth’s best friend having been stricken with the plague and her quickly deteriorating state contrasted against the day to day business of upper class tea parties and walks through the estate grounds.  And the fact that her friend was three quarters dead and no one but Elizabeth seemed to notice!  Pretty hilarious.

One complaint that I have heard about this novel is that as fun as zombies are it’s still Pride and Prejudice.  And I would have to say that this is a fair assessment.  Grahame-Smith leaves most of Austen’s story intact.  In fact he leaves most of the story in her own words, inserting his own story elements.  This is actually where my biggest criticism comes from.  Some of Grahame-Smiths additions were just to liven up the story a bit.  He threw in luridly hinted at infidelities and lots of balls and sex jokes clothed in Victorian language and indirectness.  It came across like a trashy romance novel.  I was really really tired of the references to the attraction being to “his most English of parts” and young women blushing as they cradled his (musket) balls gently in their hands.

Overall I enjoyed this story and think that Grahame-Smith did an excellent job in his work.  Sadly the one element which I most hoped for, zombie hordes chasing frightened gentry and devouring them in bloody carnage, was missing.  As for anyone who may be interested in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I would just say that it is still Pride and Prejudice.  I don’t think Grahame-Smith edited anything out of Austen’s novel, instead inserting his own additions, so this book is loooong.  In some ways that’s good, because all of the elements which I most enjoyed from Austen are still present, but I think that it would have been more enjoyable as a zombie novel had it been shorter.  It’s hard to sustain zombies as a credible threat for 61 chapters in which business goes on as usual in the round of balls and tea parties and visiting country estates.  All that said it was a well crafted story and quite enjoyable to read.  And there is just something so deliciously exciting about the irreverence of putting zombies in the middle of a Jane Austin novel!