Warm Bodies/Isaac Marion

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion; horror, romance, zombies; 256 pages

I picked this up because of the wide range of blurbs on the cover: Stephenie Meyer, Simon Pegg, and Josh Bazell (of Beat the Reaper fame) have all endorsed it, and that's a strange enough combination to catch my attention. Though the plot also sounded pretty intriguing: Our narrator is R, a zombie who one day encounters a teenage boy, and eats his brain. But instead of the brief sensory flashbacks that usually accompany such a meal, R starts getting real memories, and bits of personality from the boy's last thoughts. He also starts to remember Julie, the boy's girlfriend, and feels a strong urge to protect her. Soon R is rebelling against the elder zombies, forming sentences, and abstaining from human flesh. Is it residual brain chemicals left over from his last meal, or is he really changing into something else?

I loved this book. There's lots of very dark humor, but it's mixed with moments of surprising sweetness (R's and Julie's relationship, or R's thoughts of his zombie children--long story). Marion's excellent writing makes this more than a simple zombie story: there are long stretches of R's inner monologue that is very deep and, in some places, terrifying. But let's face it, if anyone is suited to mull on the existentialism of human existence, it's zombies. I can see this one making it on my "best of the year" list in a few months.