Undead Anonymous

First of all, I want to make one thing clear:

This is not a Best of List.  A Best of List implies that I thought these were the best books of 2009.  While to some extent that’s true, a Best of List is only my opinion, not a statement of fact, and has nothing to do with the value or the quality of the writing of the books I included. It’s just a reflection of my own personal tastes and perceptions.

I’m attempting to make this subtle clarification because people tend to take Best of Lists a little too personally and passionately, as if by leaving a particular book off the list I was somehow disparaging the author or showing my lack of taste or literary judgment. And I can show that just fine without being reminded of it, thank you.

So instead, these are simply my favorite books – the reads I enjoyed the most, for one reason or another. And before you say, “Hey, that book didn’t come out in 2009,” I never said these were my favorite books that hit the shelves last year.  Just the favorite books I read.

1) Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)
Books capture my imagination for a number of reasons, but this one captured them for all of them. Narrative voice, structure, style, flow, and a story populated with characters that I felt I could reach out and touch. Who doesn’t love a good story about a circus? I recommend this book to everyone. It was my favorite read of 2009.

2) Beat the Reaper (Josh Bazell)
“So I’m on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow…” How can you top that for an opening line in a novel? A fun, unabashedly dark and imaginative debut novel, this one pushed all of my buttons. Darkly comic, entertaining, and a plot that never lets up. If you like your romance sprinkled with mafia hit men and hospital hi-jinks, then this is the book for you.

3) The Likeness (Tana French)
This is the follow up to Tana French’s debut In The Woods. Both novels are mysteries set in small towns on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland. While I found the story and the mystery of her first novel more complex and compelling, The Likeness is one of those books where the characters seem so real that you can’t believe they’re not still hanging about once you’ve finished with the book. This one stayed with me for several days after I finished it.

4) Fool (Christopher Moore)
If you haven’t read any of Moore’s novels, you can’t go wrong starting off with this one. Richly detailed with research, Fool tells the story of King Lear from the viewpoint of Pocket, the King’s fool. Filled with trademark Christopher Moore humor and lots of tawdry Shakespearean antics, Fool is Christopher Moore at his best.

5) American Gods (Neil Gaiman)
Filled with beautiful prose and a dark, compelling, poignant story about the battle between the forgotten gods of the old world and the new gods who have sprung up to take their place, Gaiman manages to make the fantastic and magical seem possible. A rich, satisfying read.

This is a story about love.
And desperation
And madness.

It’s about suffering and redemption.
Infidelity and infertility.
Betrayal and heartbreak.

It’s about the choices people make when at their most vulnerable.
Their most courageous.
Their most inebriated.

But mostly, it’s about peanut butter.

The players are the usual suspects. The hero. The villain. The doting wife. The overbearing mother. The comic relief sidekick. And the lovable dog who inevitably gets hit by a car or otherwise injured and yet miraculously survives in the end.

Nothing changes. There’s no character arc. No one learns anything.  They all exist in a cocoon of consumer excess and designer drugs and reality television. So don’t expect growth and revelations. These are, after all, mostly men.

So why would anyone care about what happens to these people? That’s simple…

Because of the peanut butter.

the social options for zombies are pretty limited.  for starters, we’re not allowed in restaurants, shopping malls, movie theaters, bars, grocery stores, or any other place where we might disturb the living.  we’re not even allowed in cemeteries, at least not during the day.  and with an 11pm curfew, that doesn’t leave us with a lot of time to mingle.

of course, you don’t really want to be out wandering around alone after sunset, not unless you’re willing to risk getting dismembered by fraternity pledges or dragged around by rednecks while tied to the bumper of a sports utility vehicle or duct-taped to a utility pole by teenagers with a firecracker shoved up your ass.

i always did play it a bit more cautious, even in life, so i spend most of my time in the wine cellar watching cable television and drinking my father’s wine collection.  other than the twice weekly undead anonymous meetings, i don’t get out much.  and as one of the living dead, my options for romance are pretty limited.  i haven’t been to any of the zombie sing;es’ mixers, but i hear they’re a regular maggot-fest.

when they brought me home from the spca, mom and dad set me up in the wine cellar with a mattress and a case of glade air freshener.  mom prefers the neutralizer fragrance because it works directly toward the source of the odor.  personally, i’m partial to lilac spring, though tropical mist has a nice, fruity scent.

other than being allowed to take an occasional pine-sol bath, i don’t get invited into the house very often.  this probably has something to do with the fact that the last time i sat down with my parents for dinner, one of the stitches on my face popped and a piece of rotting tissue fell into my mother’s homemade gazpacho.

for the most part, mom and mad have been great – though my mom still lets out an occasional scream and runs away when i try to give her a hug.  and dad keeps dropping not-so-subtle hints about the stench of my rotting flesh and wondering aloud if i wouldn’t be happier in a zombie shelter. 

so i spend most of my time sitting in the wine cellar on my mattress, drinking wine and watching cable on the 32-inch television my parents had installed.  it could have been worse.  i could have ended up imprisoned in a zombie zoo or exploited on a reality television show.  i’ve heard “zombie nanny” is the worst, though apparently “zombie survivor” runs a close second.

sometimes i feel guilty about what i’ve put my parents through, but it’s not like i reanimated on purpose. still, i appreciate what they’ve done for me.  they could have left me at the spca.  i guess that just proves that you never stop being a parent, even after your son comes back from the dead.

all stray zombies are taken to the spca and held for three days, seven days with identification.  most fresh zombies who haven’t been embalmed tend to spoil within 72 hours, so they have to move those who are formaldehyde-challenged out pretty quick before a rectal cavity bursts.  trust me, you don’t want to be around when that happens.

my stay at the spca wasn’t all that bad.  they put me in my own cage in the zombie kennel, complete with a bowl of water and a rawhide bone to chew on.  they even gave me my own litter box, which isn’t all that easy to use, if you want to know the truth. 

if you’ve never tried squatting naked over a litter box with one useless ankle and one useless arm while other animated rotting corpses in adjacent cages stare at you, then you probably wouldn’t understand.

fortunately, my parents claimed me after two days.  the stigma of claiming your undead son and bringing him home to live with you can wreak havoc on your social status, so i can’t exactly blame mom and dad for not rushing out to get me, but one more day and i would have been a crash test dummy.

not all of the dead who reanimate have relatives or friends who can take them in.  most don’t.  and without a host guardian, zombies eventually get turned over to the county for salvage and redistribution or used for medical research, like impact testing.

the spca is working to implement a companion zombie program and solicit more zombie foster volunteers, but those ideas haven’t exactly caught on yet.

when asked about their first memory, most breathers recall breast feeding, riding a tricycle, being afraid of the dark, getting dressed for bed, discovering their bellybutton, playing with bugs, their first day of school, their first stuffed animal, or their first christmas.

no one remembers their birth. getting evicted from the womb and squeezed out through the vaginal canal. your skin covered in amniotic fluid and placental blood. emerging into a noisy world with strange smells and blinding lights. someone with a white mask and gloves grabbing your soft, malleable head with a pair of forceps.

no wonder newborn babies cry.

my new existence, my zombie birth, began with the realization that my external body cavities were packed with autopsy gel.

not exactly one of the top ten moments of my life.

except this isn’t life anymore.  and it’s not death, either.  it’s not even in between.  it’s more like a bad spin-off from a successful sitcom that the network refuses to cancel.

not every corpse that’s prepped for burial gets plugged up with cotton soaked in autopsy gel like me, but my mortician was a stickler for details.  a real by-the-book kind of guy.  even dressed me in a skin-tight plastic body suit to control the leakage of any body fluids.  i had a hell of a time getting out of that damn thing.

my name is andy and I’m a survivor.

at least that’s what i’m supposed to say and think and believe.  but i can’t say it, i don’t think it, and the only thing i believe is that this is worse than anything i could have imagined.

just so you understand, here are the basic facts you need to know about what happened to me:

- i died in a car accident when my volkswagen passat slammed into a redwood tree at sixty miles per hour
- i reanimated three days later and walked away from my coffin, just like jesus, only without the halo and the all-expenses paid trip to heaven
- my left ear is mangled, my face looks like a jigsaw puzzle, and my vocal cords were so badly damaged that i have to wear a dry erase board around my neck to communicate
- my left arm is useless, the bones pulverized from my shoulder to my elbow, ending in a twisted claw that used to be my left hand, which makes using the shift key a pain in the ass
- my left ankle is broken and twisted at such an angle that my toes are pointing at my right foot, so when i walk i’m hunched forward and limping, one arm hanging useless, the quintessential, stereotypical zombie.  even if i wear a hoodie, i stand out like a vegetarian at a texas barbecue.

needless to say, halloween seems more fitting than it used to.  after all, it’s not like I need a costume anymore.