What do you think?
Rate this book
Handling the Undead
Something very peculiar is happening in Stockholm. There's a heatwave on and people cannot turn their lights out or switch their appliances off. Then the terrible news breaks. In the city morgue, the dead are waking up...
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
353 people are currently reading
10.6k people want to read
About the author
John Ajvide Lindqvist
77books4,090followersJohn Ajvide Lindqvist (John Erik Ajvide Lindqvist) is a Swedish author who grew up in Blackeberg, the setting for
Let the Right One In
. Wanting to become something awful and fantastic, he first became a conjurer, and then was a stand-up comedian for twelve years. He has also written for Swedish television.
His Let the Right One In was a bestseller in Sweden and was named Best Novel in Translation 2005 in Norway. He also is the author of Handling the Undead and Harbor .
Russian profile can be found here: /author/show...
His Let the Right One In was a bestseller in Sweden and was named Best Novel in Translation 2005 in Norway. He also is the author of Handling the Undead and Harbor .
Russian profile can be found here: /author/show...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,387 reviews
August 27, 2020
(B) 73% | More than Satisfactory
Notes: An interesting speculation, but its main characters are boring, it force-feeds sentiment and it ends without resolution.
Notes: An interesting speculation, but its main characters are boring, it force-feeds sentiment and it ends without resolution.
August 5, 2011
In this book, the corpses of the recently dead in Sweden become reanimated which leads to numerous legal, political and ethical issues when it comes to dealing with folks who aren’t technically alive. What kind of dilemmas would this cause society? For example, if this actually happened in Stockholm, I’m sure that that the publishers of Stieg Larsson’s books would chain his zombified ass to a desk and let him bang on the keys of a laptop until they got enough to put out a new bestseller, The Girl Who sJFnfJGgJOJ=I30&*(&U389kkl8.
Back to this book. Sweden is experiencing a weird electrical surge that leaves people unable to turn off or unplug their electronics, and it also seems to be giving everyone some wicked headaches. After a sudden intensification of the electrical field, it’s gone but in it’s wake, the recently dead in the area have awakened.
However, these aren’t the usual flesh eating zombies. These are just mindless and disgusting corpses that usually try to return to their old homes. The Swedish government tries to deal with 2000 of the walking dead as their loved ones demand answers and access to them. Is this a virus? Something supernatural? A sign of the apocalypse? No one knows, and the status of the zombies� civil rights is up in the air since no law has ever addressed the undead before. As tensions rise, it becomes clear that the zombies are causing some kind of telepathy in the living people as well as becoming mirrors to the emotional state of those closest to them.
As both a fan of the zombie genre and Lindquvist’s previous genre-bending vampire novel Let the Right One In, I had high hopes for this one, but I was supremely disappointed. Part of my problem with this has to do with my own preferences in zombie story telling. I like my zombies to be horrific cannibals who munch brains and destroy society while survivors struggle against them and each other. Whenever anyone starts to add in telepathy or tries to make the zombies part of some larger supernatural force, my eyes glaze over. And if you’ve got a pack of zombies that are just sad remnants of the people who died that don’t even try to gnaw on the nearest person, then I’m just not that interested. (Yes, I realize I have issues.)
It seems like Lindquvist couldn’t decide if he was writing a horror novel about the nature of death, or kind of an absurd take on the idea of how society would react if people did come back from the dead. Frankly, S.G. Browne’s black comedy Breathers already dealt with a lot of these ideas, and Browne did it better. The focus keeps wandering as Lindqvist tries to add in some horror elements late in the game, and the ending was a mess.
It’s still well-written and Lindquvist is a writer who realizes that people are the ultimate monsters, but I would have liked to have seen what kind of twist he could have put on the classic zombie genre of the undead destroying society rather than society trying to figure out how to deal with some mostly harmless walking corpses.
Back to this book. Sweden is experiencing a weird electrical surge that leaves people unable to turn off or unplug their electronics, and it also seems to be giving everyone some wicked headaches. After a sudden intensification of the electrical field, it’s gone but in it’s wake, the recently dead in the area have awakened.
However, these aren’t the usual flesh eating zombies. These are just mindless and disgusting corpses that usually try to return to their old homes. The Swedish government tries to deal with 2000 of the walking dead as their loved ones demand answers and access to them. Is this a virus? Something supernatural? A sign of the apocalypse? No one knows, and the status of the zombies� civil rights is up in the air since no law has ever addressed the undead before. As tensions rise, it becomes clear that the zombies are causing some kind of telepathy in the living people as well as becoming mirrors to the emotional state of those closest to them.
As both a fan of the zombie genre and Lindquvist’s previous genre-bending vampire novel Let the Right One In, I had high hopes for this one, but I was supremely disappointed. Part of my problem with this has to do with my own preferences in zombie story telling. I like my zombies to be horrific cannibals who munch brains and destroy society while survivors struggle against them and each other. Whenever anyone starts to add in telepathy or tries to make the zombies part of some larger supernatural force, my eyes glaze over. And if you’ve got a pack of zombies that are just sad remnants of the people who died that don’t even try to gnaw on the nearest person, then I’m just not that interested. (Yes, I realize I have issues.)
It seems like Lindquvist couldn’t decide if he was writing a horror novel about the nature of death, or kind of an absurd take on the idea of how society would react if people did come back from the dead. Frankly, S.G. Browne’s black comedy Breathers already dealt with a lot of these ideas, and Browne did it better. The focus keeps wandering as Lindqvist tries to add in some horror elements late in the game, and the ending was a mess.
It’s still well-written and Lindquvist is a writer who realizes that people are the ultimate monsters, but I would have liked to have seen what kind of twist he could have put on the classic zombie genre of the undead destroying society rather than society trying to figure out how to deal with some mostly harmless walking corpses.
November 18, 2020
Exceptional, morbid, & even quite beautiful. This one forms a trifecta with two other grand titans of modern horror lit I've read of late, "The Troop" by Nick Cutter and "The Girl Next Door" by Jack Ketchum. Alright, alright, I was also mightily impressed by the military-novel-slash-zombie-epic "World War Z"... so that's quite a few there! For a snobby reader who adored the horror genre, I sure am blessed.
The eeriness in this one raises hairs & activates them good ol' goosebumps. The relationships being tested as the natural boundaries of human existence is displaced for good makes the book unique and it is written in good taste, with fascinating stories that seem true--that the general existence of zombies is finally acknowledged in a book about the rising dead, that they exist in the same dimension, that they aren't a completely foreign concept by the residents handling the undead--this is uncommon and hardly ever done. This is gratifyingly ungratuitous... a true triumph of the genre. What the overpraised novels "Cell" by Stephen King & "The Strain" by Guillermo Del Toro tried but ultimately failed to do: Thrill.
The eeriness in this one raises hairs & activates them good ol' goosebumps. The relationships being tested as the natural boundaries of human existence is displaced for good makes the book unique and it is written in good taste, with fascinating stories that seem true--that the general existence of zombies is finally acknowledged in a book about the rising dead, that they exist in the same dimension, that they aren't a completely foreign concept by the residents handling the undead--this is uncommon and hardly ever done. This is gratifyingly ungratuitous... a true triumph of the genre. What the overpraised novels "Cell" by Stephen King & "The Strain" by Guillermo Del Toro tried but ultimately failed to do: Thrill.
February 5, 2022
This is my first John Ajvide Lindqvist book and it will certainly not be the last. 'Handling the Undead' is like no other zombie book I have ever encountered. With the cleverness and stealth of the most seasoned Ninja, Ajvide Lindqvist swoops in and grabs a hold of your psyche - and doesn't let go until the spine-tingling very last word.
Narrator Steven Pacey is phenomenal. He makes it easy to identify with the characters and their plights. It was as though I was observing them from the viewpoint of a fan in the stands of a game - Exceptional job.
Narrator Steven Pacey is phenomenal. He makes it easy to identify with the characters and their plights. It was as though I was observing them from the viewpoint of a fan in the stands of a game - Exceptional job.
March 22, 2017
Another Swedish gift to the world � after lutfisk, Ikea, Abba and the girl with the tattoo on her arse, now we get nice zombies. Well, these ones are not that nice, I guess. They don’t want to eat you, so that’s a plus, but they have limited conversation and really their concept of personal hygiene leaves something to be desired. But like Paul Simon said they’re all right in a sort of limited way for an off-night. In fact I was behind these zombies all the way until the last quarter of the story when like a cornered Christian Mr Lindqvist starts babbling mystical abstractions in an obvious attempt to cover up the blatant fact that he did not know how to end his story.
Up to then it was compelling. For a very specific period of time in a very specific place (Stockholm) dead people come back to life. But in a realistic way, not in a cosy way like in those Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlets
No � imagine your wife dies in a car crash and a week later she wakes up in the morgue � most of her face and right side is still missing and she really doesn’t seem to be quite herself. What do you tell your son? All she does now is flap around vaguely. She’s lost all her ambition. The situation is distressing. So we get three such scenarios and an attempted overview of how the authorities react to 2000 or so re-livers, as they’re called.
All of this is good, very compelling reading. I like stories where the crazy stuff is treated seriously and realistically. Just like it was in Let the Right One In, Mr Lindqvist’s famous brilliant vampire novel. But as I say in this one for the last 50 pages the (living) characters start to spout mystical non-sequiturs which finally aggravated me to death and I died and came back to life and I wasn’t a nice zombie and I tracked Mr Lindqvist down and ate him. You may have read about it in the papers.
For me this was Goat’s Head Soup after Sticky Fingers, Walking Dead season 6 after Walking Dead season 5, Joey after Friends, Roger Moore after Sean Connery, Sentimental Education after Madame Bovary�.
First 300 pages : 4 stars
Next 60 pages : 1.5 stars
Rounded up to 3 stars because I like where this author is coming from even though I didn’t like where he went to in this one.
Up to then it was compelling. For a very specific period of time in a very specific place (Stockholm) dead people come back to life. But in a realistic way, not in a cosy way like in those Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlets
No � imagine your wife dies in a car crash and a week later she wakes up in the morgue � most of her face and right side is still missing and she really doesn’t seem to be quite herself. What do you tell your son? All she does now is flap around vaguely. She’s lost all her ambition. The situation is distressing. So we get three such scenarios and an attempted overview of how the authorities react to 2000 or so re-livers, as they’re called.
All of this is good, very compelling reading. I like stories where the crazy stuff is treated seriously and realistically. Just like it was in Let the Right One In, Mr Lindqvist’s famous brilliant vampire novel. But as I say in this one for the last 50 pages the (living) characters start to spout mystical non-sequiturs which finally aggravated me to death and I died and came back to life and I wasn’t a nice zombie and I tracked Mr Lindqvist down and ate him. You may have read about it in the papers.
For me this was Goat’s Head Soup after Sticky Fingers, Walking Dead season 6 after Walking Dead season 5, Joey after Friends, Roger Moore after Sean Connery, Sentimental Education after Madame Bovary�.
First 300 pages : 4 stars
Next 60 pages : 1.5 stars
Rounded up to 3 stars because I like where this author is coming from even though I didn’t like where he went to in this one.
March 18, 2009
A butterfly beats its wings somewhere in the universe - and an electrical field lowers itself over Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, and causes a piercing headache in everyone as well as making it impossible to turn of any electrical appliances or machines. When the field lifts, something has changed - the recently deceased have come back to life... - and they want to come home.
That's the premise in John Ajvide Lindqvist's book. This wouldn't normally be a book I would read - much less buy - but after reading a review in Weekendavisen, I felt like I had to read it. And it is definitely not your typical zombie story!
The book follows three families. David and his son Magnus who looses the mother of the family, Eva - who dies a few hours before the dead wake up again and therefore is very interesting to authorities, especially because she speaks. Flora and her grandmother - grandfather actually returns from the morgue. And finally - and to me and the reviewer in Weekendavisen most interesting - 6 years old Elias and his mother Anna and grandfather. Elias died a month earlier and grandfather therefore had to dig him out. This scene, with grandfather digging and Elias scratching on the lid of the coffin as well as the sound of him shaking the box of Legos he was burried with, was so strong and emotional - and the reason I had to read this book. This storyline with Elias' mother and grandfather trying to bring him back to life by giving him water with salt and sugar, using cremes to help make his skin less dry is so touching, especially if you have children of your own that you would do everything for - even after they've been dead for a month and certainly look the part and have nothing left of that cuddly chubbyness they had when you last saw them...
A fourth component is the medias and authorities. Throughout the book, we are given interviews with doctors, politicians and military personel as well as parts of articles and tv-programmes (including from CNN and other medias outside Sweden) which help tell the not personal and private stories of these undeads - and put a light on the difference between what the relatives and the authorities want to see happen with these 'people'.
This is a book about metaphysics (is it the soul that brought these people back - and what is a soul then? What is death? Is death no longer the end?), religion (Is this the End of Days? Is the world going under and Jesus returning?), ethics (is it okay to do just anything to the undeads since they have no rights (Citizenship ends with death)?) but mostly, it's a book about love - love for your family, and especially the love between parents and children.
But it's also a book about hate and fear. See, the undeads have the ability to receive what you're thinking and their reactions are conditioned of what you feel. So if you feel hate towards them or think they are ugly, they react - in strong ways, as little Magnus discovers when he brings his new pet rabbit to visit his undead mother...
So even though this is a very light and easy read, Lindqvist manages to put a lot of food for thought into it - and even though this is not my normal genre, I really enjoyed it and I think that I will read more of this author's works.
That's the premise in John Ajvide Lindqvist's book. This wouldn't normally be a book I would read - much less buy - but after reading a review in Weekendavisen, I felt like I had to read it. And it is definitely not your typical zombie story!
The book follows three families. David and his son Magnus who looses the mother of the family, Eva - who dies a few hours before the dead wake up again and therefore is very interesting to authorities, especially because she speaks. Flora and her grandmother - grandfather actually returns from the morgue. And finally - and to me and the reviewer in Weekendavisen most interesting - 6 years old Elias and his mother Anna and grandfather. Elias died a month earlier and grandfather therefore had to dig him out. This scene, with grandfather digging and Elias scratching on the lid of the coffin as well as the sound of him shaking the box of Legos he was burried with, was so strong and emotional - and the reason I had to read this book. This storyline with Elias' mother and grandfather trying to bring him back to life by giving him water with salt and sugar, using cremes to help make his skin less dry is so touching, especially if you have children of your own that you would do everything for - even after they've been dead for a month and certainly look the part and have nothing left of that cuddly chubbyness they had when you last saw them...
A fourth component is the medias and authorities. Throughout the book, we are given interviews with doctors, politicians and military personel as well as parts of articles and tv-programmes (including from CNN and other medias outside Sweden) which help tell the not personal and private stories of these undeads - and put a light on the difference between what the relatives and the authorities want to see happen with these 'people'.
This is a book about metaphysics (is it the soul that brought these people back - and what is a soul then? What is death? Is death no longer the end?), religion (Is this the End of Days? Is the world going under and Jesus returning?), ethics (is it okay to do just anything to the undeads since they have no rights (Citizenship ends with death)?) but mostly, it's a book about love - love for your family, and especially the love between parents and children.
But it's also a book about hate and fear. See, the undeads have the ability to receive what you're thinking and their reactions are conditioned of what you feel. So if you feel hate towards them or think they are ugly, they react - in strong ways, as little Magnus discovers when he brings his new pet rabbit to visit his undead mother...
So even though this is a very light and easy read, Lindqvist manages to put a lot of food for thought into it - and even though this is not my normal genre, I really enjoyed it and I think that I will read more of this author's works.
January 23, 2011
Ok, I'm giving up on page 146 of Handling the Undead and giving the book two stars. Sure, I only read about half the novel. I don't care. I feel like I can make the call. Why, you ask?
I picked up this book off the “new fiction� library shelf when a woman was checking out about 14,000 DVDs and I didn't want to stand behind her and wait. Last year I read and loved Let the Right One In, for which this is author is best known, and I was hoping Handling the Undead was just as moving and innovative except with zombies rather than vampires.
The last sentence of the previous paragrah contains an unfair expectation. Zombies are, you know, zombies. They sort of go “uuuhhhhh� and walk around slow (Unless you're in that scary as shit zombie movie, the one with Sarah Polley, which I can only watch five minutes at a time when I channel surf basic cable. Those zombies were fast.) but have no emotional weight. They can't talk. Well, in this case, at least one of them kind of talks, but...well, barely.
I could be wrong, but I get the feeling I knew where Lindqvist was headed with the storyline and wasn't that interested in the terrain. So these zombies don't kill anyone (uh, at least in the first 146 pages) and the zombies' loved ones aren't sure how to handle the newly undead. Should they sledgehammer the bodies until they're dead for sure? Lock them up and hope for a cure? Renovate the spare bedroom for zombie needs? Are the zombies even their loved ones, or just their loved ones corporeal forms reacting to freak stimuli? Linqvist, I think, is trying to explore the limits and desperation of love. Ok. I get that. And he adds fascinating new elements (e.g. the initial event when all appliances turn on and are impossible to shut down) to the genre. He also seems to relish twisting the reader's intestines by placing characters in realistic and heartbreaking situations. His characters sound authentic. But...Let the Right One In transcended horror novel conventions and Handling the Dead did not. And I wanted more. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe I'm like everyone who bought Around the World in a Day hoping the album sounded like the Purple Rain soundtrack. I'm ok with that. Do I think exploring the limits and desperation of love in relation to encountering, for example, one's wife as a zombie, is interesting? Yes. 146 pages worth of interesting, in this case, but not more. I wanted this novel to end by page 100. And that's no way to read. Two stars, for the first half, a pass on the second.
I picked up this book off the “new fiction� library shelf when a woman was checking out about 14,000 DVDs and I didn't want to stand behind her and wait. Last year I read and loved Let the Right One In, for which this is author is best known, and I was hoping Handling the Undead was just as moving and innovative except with zombies rather than vampires.
The last sentence of the previous paragrah contains an unfair expectation. Zombies are, you know, zombies. They sort of go “uuuhhhhh� and walk around slow (Unless you're in that scary as shit zombie movie, the one with Sarah Polley, which I can only watch five minutes at a time when I channel surf basic cable. Those zombies were fast.) but have no emotional weight. They can't talk. Well, in this case, at least one of them kind of talks, but...well, barely.
I could be wrong, but I get the feeling I knew where Lindqvist was headed with the storyline and wasn't that interested in the terrain. So these zombies don't kill anyone (uh, at least in the first 146 pages) and the zombies' loved ones aren't sure how to handle the newly undead. Should they sledgehammer the bodies until they're dead for sure? Lock them up and hope for a cure? Renovate the spare bedroom for zombie needs? Are the zombies even their loved ones, or just their loved ones corporeal forms reacting to freak stimuli? Linqvist, I think, is trying to explore the limits and desperation of love. Ok. I get that. And he adds fascinating new elements (e.g. the initial event when all appliances turn on and are impossible to shut down) to the genre. He also seems to relish twisting the reader's intestines by placing characters in realistic and heartbreaking situations. His characters sound authentic. But...Let the Right One In transcended horror novel conventions and Handling the Dead did not. And I wanted more. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe I'm like everyone who bought Around the World in a Day hoping the album sounded like the Purple Rain soundtrack. I'm ok with that. Do I think exploring the limits and desperation of love in relation to encountering, for example, one's wife as a zombie, is interesting? Yes. 146 pages worth of interesting, in this case, but not more. I wanted this novel to end by page 100. And that's no way to read. Two stars, for the first half, a pass on the second.
December 16, 2017
3.5 estrellas
Las 3 primeras partes de este libro son increíbles, me encantaron. Es una novela de zombies pero realista ¿qué pasaría si la persona que diste por muerta, por la que lloraste y extrañas con todo tu ser regresa a la vida? Pero no es como la recordabas, es un cadáver que se mueve y no mucho más que eso.
Aquí los zombies no te quieren comer, no te intentan convertir. Simplemente, quieren regresar a casa.
Como dije los primeros 3/4 son hermosos. El último se me hizo aburrido y medio jalado de los pelos.
No se compara con Let The right one in, pero si te gustan los zombies y quieres leer algo distinto, sí lo recomiendo
Las 3 primeras partes de este libro son increíbles, me encantaron. Es una novela de zombies pero realista ¿qué pasaría si la persona que diste por muerta, por la que lloraste y extrañas con todo tu ser regresa a la vida? Pero no es como la recordabas, es un cadáver que se mueve y no mucho más que eso.
Aquí los zombies no te quieren comer, no te intentan convertir. Simplemente, quieren regresar a casa.
Como dije los primeros 3/4 son hermosos. El último se me hizo aburrido y medio jalado de los pelos.
No se compara con Let The right one in, pero si te gustan los zombies y quieres leer algo distinto, sí lo recomiendo
November 13, 2021
I love these books
All the time, everywhere.
All the time, everywhere.
October 26, 2010
2.5 stars
As a huge fan of , I can confidently tell you is not nearly as good as 's debut novel. This book is lifeless and barely kicking, just like the zombies it is about.
Now, of course I have to give the author credit for the fresh premise. Lindqvist's zombies are not violent and are not monsters. The story is not about them going after people to chomp on their flesh. Rather, the author raises questions: if the undead are not aggressive, how will people react to them, handle them? will the relatives welcome the return of their dead beloved or be disgusted by them? how should the undead population be treated by authorities, as corpses or as human beings? what place do they have in a society? This is definitely not something often explored in zombie literature.
In spite of the interesting premise, the book is just so dull and slow! There is maybe a couple of scenes of genuine horror and gore, the rest is all unrelatable, unremarkable, cardboard people going about their dull business, thinking dull thoughts. And then it's written in a very juvenile style. IDK if the translator didn't do her job properly. The best parts of the story are snippets of TV interviews, medical research, and newspaper articles.
Basically, the novel lacks psychological depth, complexity, emotional impact and excitement of . It is a half-baked effort, a story that never reaches its full potential. Give it a miss if you are a fan of the author's first book.
As a huge fan of , I can confidently tell you is not nearly as good as 's debut novel. This book is lifeless and barely kicking, just like the zombies it is about.
Now, of course I have to give the author credit for the fresh premise. Lindqvist's zombies are not violent and are not monsters. The story is not about them going after people to chomp on their flesh. Rather, the author raises questions: if the undead are not aggressive, how will people react to them, handle them? will the relatives welcome the return of their dead beloved or be disgusted by them? how should the undead population be treated by authorities, as corpses or as human beings? what place do they have in a society? This is definitely not something often explored in zombie literature.
In spite of the interesting premise, the book is just so dull and slow! There is maybe a couple of scenes of genuine horror and gore, the rest is all unrelatable, unremarkable, cardboard people going about their dull business, thinking dull thoughts. And then it's written in a very juvenile style. IDK if the translator didn't do her job properly. The best parts of the story are snippets of TV interviews, medical research, and newspaper articles.
Basically, the novel lacks psychological depth, complexity, emotional impact and excitement of . It is a half-baked effort, a story that never reaches its full potential. Give it a miss if you are a fan of the author's first book.
December 16, 2024
4.5 stars
One hot summer night in Stockholm, a prolonged electrical surge results in televisions that won’t shut off, lights that refuse to dim, racing pacemakers, and the reanimation of the city’s recent dead. With that premise, Handling the Undead proceeds to follow the storylines of a few families who have had their loved ones return. This includes Gustav and Anna, whose grandson and son, respectively, died a month prior after a fall from a balcony and was buried in one of the local cemeteries; David and Magnus, whose wife and mother died the night of the reanimation in a car accident and comes back in the hospital morgue; and Elvy and Flora, whose husband and grandfather died within the week after suffering from dementia for years, and who leaves the funeral home and returns to the home he shared with Elvy while living.
This book is not a typical zombie story; these undead are not bloodthirsty monsters. They are presented as mysteries and are in varying states of decomposition and responsiveness to the world and the people around them. But this is certainly a horror story of the most acute kind in that it takes the most feared and devastating truths of human existence, death and grief, and forces the reader to confront them head-on. By presenting the reliving as mirrors of the thoughts and feelings of the living people around them, Lindqvist forces his characters (and therefore the reader) to face their own limitations. Handling the Undead relates how the individuals in the book respond to such an event, and also focuses on the response of the government and society as a whole.
In addition to what are obviously challenging themes, there are some scenes in this book that I found quite difficult to get through. This was both because of the emotional aspect of the story, as well as the horror of witnessing the effects of decomposition on the human body, relayed in a way that was based in the reality of the decay of organic matter, and not just for shock value. Gustav and Anna’s journey following the exhumation of the body of little Elias was the storyline that resonated the most for me and had some of the most difficult scenes. There is also a very unpleasant scene involving a rabbit at one point in the book.
I wasn’t sure, as the remaining page count dwindled, how Lindqvist was going to manage to pull off the end, but he did, and I feel like it was done in an elegant way that rang true to the characters and the story, and provided a somewhat oblique and yet satisfying answer to the big issues at play in the book. I was pretty impressed and moved by the various endings, to be honest, which is why I’m rounding up to five stars for ŷ.
One hot summer night in Stockholm, a prolonged electrical surge results in televisions that won’t shut off, lights that refuse to dim, racing pacemakers, and the reanimation of the city’s recent dead. With that premise, Handling the Undead proceeds to follow the storylines of a few families who have had their loved ones return. This includes Gustav and Anna, whose grandson and son, respectively, died a month prior after a fall from a balcony and was buried in one of the local cemeteries; David and Magnus, whose wife and mother died the night of the reanimation in a car accident and comes back in the hospital morgue; and Elvy and Flora, whose husband and grandfather died within the week after suffering from dementia for years, and who leaves the funeral home and returns to the home he shared with Elvy while living.
This book is not a typical zombie story; these undead are not bloodthirsty monsters. They are presented as mysteries and are in varying states of decomposition and responsiveness to the world and the people around them. But this is certainly a horror story of the most acute kind in that it takes the most feared and devastating truths of human existence, death and grief, and forces the reader to confront them head-on. By presenting the reliving as mirrors of the thoughts and feelings of the living people around them, Lindqvist forces his characters (and therefore the reader) to face their own limitations. Handling the Undead relates how the individuals in the book respond to such an event, and also focuses on the response of the government and society as a whole.
In addition to what are obviously challenging themes, there are some scenes in this book that I found quite difficult to get through. This was both because of the emotional aspect of the story, as well as the horror of witnessing the effects of decomposition on the human body, relayed in a way that was based in the reality of the decay of organic matter, and not just for shock value. Gustav and Anna’s journey following the exhumation of the body of little Elias was the storyline that resonated the most for me and had some of the most difficult scenes. There is also a very unpleasant scene involving a rabbit at one point in the book.
I wasn’t sure, as the remaining page count dwindled, how Lindqvist was going to manage to pull off the end, but he did, and I feel like it was done in an elegant way that rang true to the characters and the story, and provided a somewhat oblique and yet satisfying answer to the big issues at play in the book. I was pretty impressed and moved by the various endings, to be honest, which is why I’m rounding up to five stars for ŷ.
September 28, 2017
Segundo libro del reto La casa encantada.
Exactamente no sé qué esperaba de este libro, pero no ha conseguido engancharme.
Exactamente no sé qué esperaba de este libro, pero no ha conseguido engancharme.
December 20, 2022
2.5�
Una novela entretenida pero en la que me han quedado muchas dudas acerca del despertar de los muertos. Además, no aparecen mucho, sin embargo cuando lo hacen, las escenas son escalofriantes.
.
An entertaining novel but in which I have many doubts about the awakening of the dead. Also, they don't appear much, however when they do, the scenes are chilling.
Una novela entretenida pero en la que me han quedado muchas dudas acerca del despertar de los muertos. Además, no aparecen mucho, sin embargo cuando lo hacen, las escenas son escalofriantes.
.
An entertaining novel but in which I have many doubts about the awakening of the dead. Also, they don't appear much, however when they do, the scenes are chilling.
April 25, 2022
En una noche inusualmente cálida en Estocolmo, Suecia, sucede algo muy extraño. Toda la gente en la ciudad experimenta un terrible dolor de cabeza. Los aparatos eléctricos se niegan a apagarse, incluso cuando están desenchufados. Y los muertos recientes empiezan a levantarse...
Suena todo como un montaje estándar para una historia de zombis, no? pero lo que John Ajvide Lindqvist nos ofrece es algo muy diferente: una deconstrucción del género zombi, o una subversión de él, o tal vez solo una visión muy diferente. Porque estos zombis no se levantan e inmediatamente comienzan a tener hambre de carne humana. Son simplemente tus seres queridos, muertos y podridos, no son lo que eran, pero tampoco se han ido del todo. Y, en última instancia, es una novela que está más preocupada por las personas que alguna vez pertenecieron a esos cadáveres arrastrados que por los cuerpos mismos.
En parte es un libro extraño. Si te adentras en él buscando una trama, o incluso un gran drama, es posible que te decepciones. Lo mismo ocurre si esperas explicaciones simples, lógicas y científicas para todo. Y la escritura puede parecer un poco incómoda, de una manera difícil de precisar que me inclino a culpar a la traducción. Pero hay muchas sutilezas fascinantes en él, cosas que invitan a contemplar los misterios de la vida y la muerte y a echar una nueva mirada a un genero de terror que se ha vuelto tan familiar que ya no nos molestamos en considerar demasiado su argumento.
Además, hay una cantidad sorprendente de momentos en los que me encontré pensando: "Guau, los zombis que no comen personas son mil veces más espeluznantes que los que sí lo hacen. ¿Quién lo hubiera pensado?".
Suena todo como un montaje estándar para una historia de zombis, no? pero lo que John Ajvide Lindqvist nos ofrece es algo muy diferente: una deconstrucción del género zombi, o una subversión de él, o tal vez solo una visión muy diferente. Porque estos zombis no se levantan e inmediatamente comienzan a tener hambre de carne humana. Son simplemente tus seres queridos, muertos y podridos, no son lo que eran, pero tampoco se han ido del todo. Y, en última instancia, es una novela que está más preocupada por las personas que alguna vez pertenecieron a esos cadáveres arrastrados que por los cuerpos mismos.
En parte es un libro extraño. Si te adentras en él buscando una trama, o incluso un gran drama, es posible que te decepciones. Lo mismo ocurre si esperas explicaciones simples, lógicas y científicas para todo. Y la escritura puede parecer un poco incómoda, de una manera difícil de precisar que me inclino a culpar a la traducción. Pero hay muchas sutilezas fascinantes en él, cosas que invitan a contemplar los misterios de la vida y la muerte y a echar una nueva mirada a un genero de terror que se ha vuelto tan familiar que ya no nos molestamos en considerar demasiado su argumento.
Además, hay una cantidad sorprendente de momentos en los que me encontré pensando: "Guau, los zombis que no comen personas son mil veces más espeluznantes que los que sí lo hacen. ¿Quién lo hubiera pensado?".
June 30, 2011
‘Let the right one in� also by John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of my favourite reads of this year, a remarkable story, not just a vampire story but so much more. ‘Handling the Undead� is just as good, another amazing story from John Ajvide Lindqvist.
‘Handling the Undead� begins in Stockholm on a night when the weather is heavy and everyone can feel that something is about to happen and it does, in the worse way imaginable, people who have been dead for two months are returning from the dead, the government are not sure what to do, the families of the ‘reliving� (as they are eventually called) are at a loss of what to do or how to feel about it?
‘Handling the Undead� is a book that makes you think, what would you do? So much happens once the ‘reliving� return, the government find themselves making the wrong decisions, how do you handle people who are technically alive but not alive, do they have rights? Do they have a place in the world? Can they return to their families?
‘Handling the Undead� is more than a story about life after death, what do you do when you lose someone and they come back from the dead? All the characters in the story are conflicted, they have lost someone in some way and now they have returned but the ‘reliving� are different, they are not the people they once were, they are a shell of what they were but at the same time there is a faint glimmer of the person they were.
All of the relationships are strong relationships, you can feel the strength as you read, and you feel their pain and their loss, their confusion, coming to terms with a loss and then their happiness when their loved ones return.
I found ‘Handling the Undead� to be a powerful read, so many questions are raised and so many social problems are brought forward, you will get very engrossed in this story, there is so much to this book that you will find enjoyable, enlightening, scary and most of all make you look at the world around you.
A must read.
‘Handling the Undead� begins in Stockholm on a night when the weather is heavy and everyone can feel that something is about to happen and it does, in the worse way imaginable, people who have been dead for two months are returning from the dead, the government are not sure what to do, the families of the ‘reliving� (as they are eventually called) are at a loss of what to do or how to feel about it?
‘Handling the Undead� is a book that makes you think, what would you do? So much happens once the ‘reliving� return, the government find themselves making the wrong decisions, how do you handle people who are technically alive but not alive, do they have rights? Do they have a place in the world? Can they return to their families?
‘Handling the Undead� is more than a story about life after death, what do you do when you lose someone and they come back from the dead? All the characters in the story are conflicted, they have lost someone in some way and now they have returned but the ‘reliving� are different, they are not the people they once were, they are a shell of what they were but at the same time there is a faint glimmer of the person they were.
All of the relationships are strong relationships, you can feel the strength as you read, and you feel their pain and their loss, their confusion, coming to terms with a loss and then their happiness when their loved ones return.
I found ‘Handling the Undead� to be a powerful read, so many questions are raised and so many social problems are brought forward, you will get very engrossed in this story, there is so much to this book that you will find enjoyable, enlightening, scary and most of all make you look at the world around you.
A must read.
October 8, 2013
I really enjoyed Lindqvist's "Let The Right One In". I liked the feel of it - the tone and darkness and sadness. I liked the immediate connection with the characters, that, while a little awkward at first, smoothed out and became effortless not long into the story. I liked the multi-level creepiness, and then the flat out horror. It was good. There were some issues with the writing, which could come down to translation, but were distracting nonetheless.
Everything that I liked about that book is missing in this one, and everything I disliked is amplified. And on top of that, "Handling the Undead" is just boring.
I gave up reading this around the 27% mark. I said that I was going to give this another 50 pages, but I just couldn't. Every single time I picked it up and saw whole conversations consisting of vague non-dialogue ("Did you...?" "Yes." "Oh, good... I thought..." "No.") I just wished for a real zombie to come eat my brain and put me out of my misery. The most frightening thing that happened in the 27% of the book I read was that it made me read spoilers. Intentionally. Yup. I fucking read SPOILERS in the hopes that they would indicate some sort of book redemption. Instead, I learned that this book is just one long, poorly written, painfully boring musing on the nature of life and death, the soul, existence. FML.
If I want to read a philosophy book, I'll do that. I pick up zombie books because I want to read about vicious, relentlessly hungry monsters. If not those kinds, then SOME kind of zombie that does something other than shuffle paperwork. Hey, Lindqvist? We already have those... they work in government.
Everything that I liked about that book is missing in this one, and everything I disliked is amplified. And on top of that, "Handling the Undead" is just boring.
I gave up reading this around the 27% mark. I said that I was going to give this another 50 pages, but I just couldn't. Every single time I picked it up and saw whole conversations consisting of vague non-dialogue ("Did you...?" "Yes." "Oh, good... I thought..." "No.") I just wished for a real zombie to come eat my brain and put me out of my misery. The most frightening thing that happened in the 27% of the book I read was that it made me read spoilers. Intentionally. Yup. I fucking read SPOILERS in the hopes that they would indicate some sort of book redemption. Instead, I learned that this book is just one long, poorly written, painfully boring musing on the nature of life and death, the soul, existence. FML.
If I want to read a philosophy book, I'll do that. I pick up zombie books because I want to read about vicious, relentlessly hungry monsters. If not those kinds, then SOME kind of zombie that does something other than shuffle paperwork. Hey, Lindqvist? We already have those... they work in government.
April 20, 2014
Anticipating that the author of Let the Right One In and Little Star would grab me by the throat again, this time with a zombie uprising in Sweden, I was very disappointed to receive only a gentle bump. Two stars are for John Ajvide Lindqvist's somber and ambitious attempt to try something radically different in a sub-genre where so many authors simply follow the market. It's an admirable try.
Freakish atmospheric phenomenon hits Stockholm during the summer and the lives of several characters are effected when the corpses of nearly 2,000 recently deceased Swedes rise from the grave. Standup comedian David loses his wife Eva in a car accident only to watch her reanimate in Danderyd Hospital. Their 9-year-old son Magnus must cope.
A reporter named Mahler is dispatched to the hospital to find the staff struggling to detain the bodies who have hopped up in the morgue and are struggling to leave. Mahler has a 6-year-old grandson who recently died and digs the boy out of his grave to bring it home to his despondent daughter Anna. What's left of the boy is more mummy than child, but rather than turn it over to the authorities, Mahler and Anna hide it.
Elvy and her granddaughter Flora are gifted with second sight and are visited by Elvy's dead husband, who cannot speak, but tries to go about living as if nothing had changed. Whereas Flora is a fan of Marilyn Manson and horror movies, her Christian grandmother sees this as a sign of the Resurrection. They both detect a presence around the undead and though the corpses remain non-violent, soon to be rounded up and interned at the hospital, the women sense something else is going on.
Handling the Undead was a Kindle purchase and by the time I'd read 70%, I started flipping through the pages to finish. The novel is inferior to Lindqvist's spellbinding debut in every way -- one-dimensional characters, flaccid atmosphere, sparse social commentary, lack of horror -- and nowhere near as chilling or unpredictable as his most recent.
Buyer beware, this is not a doomsday take on the zombie sub-genre or one in which the dead lurch around muttering "Brains!" With total seriousness, Lindqvist attempts to examine how Stockholm would react if the dead returned, from media coverage to legal issues to the behavior of Christian wingnuts. The problem is that very little seems at stake.
Afterlife stories are often hamstrung with grieving characters, who I find not very interesting because they remain stuck in one gear. They're beside themselves over the death of a loved one until they learn contact might be made, but mostly, they weep, and mope, and ache, and they do this for family members the reader has no investment in and doesn't care a fig about. Handling the Undead never overcomes this drag.
Lindqvist does conjure two ghoulish scenes involving the reanimated. One involves a grisly accident victim staring at her husband with her one remaining eye, and the second involving a drowning victim with little remaining in the way of human features trying to break into a cabin on an island.
*** Spoilers! ***
The author reveals that the undead are surrounded by an energy field which not only enables the living to read each others thoughts, but to influence the dead with their own thoughts. This is sort of like the "mood slime" in Ghostbusters II. This psychic concept was something new and had potential, but by then, I was bored by the characters and not interested in finding out what it meant for them.
Freakish atmospheric phenomenon hits Stockholm during the summer and the lives of several characters are effected when the corpses of nearly 2,000 recently deceased Swedes rise from the grave. Standup comedian David loses his wife Eva in a car accident only to watch her reanimate in Danderyd Hospital. Their 9-year-old son Magnus must cope.
A reporter named Mahler is dispatched to the hospital to find the staff struggling to detain the bodies who have hopped up in the morgue and are struggling to leave. Mahler has a 6-year-old grandson who recently died and digs the boy out of his grave to bring it home to his despondent daughter Anna. What's left of the boy is more mummy than child, but rather than turn it over to the authorities, Mahler and Anna hide it.
Elvy and her granddaughter Flora are gifted with second sight and are visited by Elvy's dead husband, who cannot speak, but tries to go about living as if nothing had changed. Whereas Flora is a fan of Marilyn Manson and horror movies, her Christian grandmother sees this as a sign of the Resurrection. They both detect a presence around the undead and though the corpses remain non-violent, soon to be rounded up and interned at the hospital, the women sense something else is going on.
Handling the Undead was a Kindle purchase and by the time I'd read 70%, I started flipping through the pages to finish. The novel is inferior to Lindqvist's spellbinding debut in every way -- one-dimensional characters, flaccid atmosphere, sparse social commentary, lack of horror -- and nowhere near as chilling or unpredictable as his most recent.
Buyer beware, this is not a doomsday take on the zombie sub-genre or one in which the dead lurch around muttering "Brains!" With total seriousness, Lindqvist attempts to examine how Stockholm would react if the dead returned, from media coverage to legal issues to the behavior of Christian wingnuts. The problem is that very little seems at stake.
Afterlife stories are often hamstrung with grieving characters, who I find not very interesting because they remain stuck in one gear. They're beside themselves over the death of a loved one until they learn contact might be made, but mostly, they weep, and mope, and ache, and they do this for family members the reader has no investment in and doesn't care a fig about. Handling the Undead never overcomes this drag.
Lindqvist does conjure two ghoulish scenes involving the reanimated. One involves a grisly accident victim staring at her husband with her one remaining eye, and the second involving a drowning victim with little remaining in the way of human features trying to break into a cabin on an island.
*** Spoilers! ***
The author reveals that the undead are surrounded by an energy field which not only enables the living to read each others thoughts, but to influence the dead with their own thoughts. This is sort of like the "mood slime" in Ghostbusters II. This psychic concept was something new and had potential, but by then, I was bored by the characters and not interested in finding out what it meant for them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 15, 2025
4.0/5
An oddly tender novel about reanimated corpses. 😆 How John Lindqvist does it is beyond me! I would have rated this higher but two things irked me. First, Marilyn Manson was mentioned way too many times. This was written in 2005 but still, it was odd. I’m also not a fan of the medical explanation for the deceased and ATP. That just could never happen, why apply an inadequate scientific answer to mysterious supernatural phenomena? It just didn’t work for me. Otherwise it’s a really creepy, fun read.
An oddly tender novel about reanimated corpses. 😆 How John Lindqvist does it is beyond me! I would have rated this higher but two things irked me. First, Marilyn Manson was mentioned way too many times. This was written in 2005 but still, it was odd. I’m also not a fan of the medical explanation for the deceased and ATP. That just could never happen, why apply an inadequate scientific answer to mysterious supernatural phenomena? It just didn’t work for me. Otherwise it’s a really creepy, fun read.
January 2, 2011
A strange, hard-to-describe book.
It started slowly; it has multiple POVs (which I normally am less than enthusiastic about); it's not about zombies (vs. the undead) until the very end of the book; I wasn't quite sure what the book was about, although it was definitely about something; it should have felt like a pretentious literary interpretation of a pop subject but didn't.
Suddenly, for no reason, there's a heat wave in Sweden, electrical appliances don't work the way they should, and the newly dead start coming back. Is the reason religious or scientific? This is carefully balanced and left in mystery (although both religion and science [and goths] are skewered, not outright, but in retrospect. "Ahhhh...that's what that meant" kind of thing).
The living, when around the dead, start becoming telepathic. The dead, when around the living, start absorbing their emotions, which are mostly negative. Bad things happen due to both.This
This wasn't a book about zombies, it was a book about death. I know, zombies are supposed to be about death, but they really aren't. They're about death-as-a-threat-you-can-fight-but-ultimately-overwhelms-you. This is a book about how-we-feel-about-our-dead. Our loved ones, are they threats, now that they're dead? Do we ever resolve what we feel about them? Do they stop being people in our hearts, even though they're not themselves? Does death terrify us because it is scary, or because we are scared of it?
I liked it. I don't know that I ever want to read it again, but I liked it.
It started slowly; it has multiple POVs (which I normally am less than enthusiastic about); it's not about zombies (vs. the undead) until the very end of the book; I wasn't quite sure what the book was about, although it was definitely about something; it should have felt like a pretentious literary interpretation of a pop subject but didn't.
Suddenly, for no reason, there's a heat wave in Sweden, electrical appliances don't work the way they should, and the newly dead start coming back. Is the reason religious or scientific? This is carefully balanced and left in mystery (although both religion and science [and goths] are skewered, not outright, but in retrospect. "Ahhhh...that's what that meant" kind of thing).
The living, when around the dead, start becoming telepathic. The dead, when around the living, start absorbing their emotions, which are mostly negative. Bad things happen due to both.This
This wasn't a book about zombies, it was a book about death. I know, zombies are supposed to be about death, but they really aren't. They're about death-as-a-threat-you-can-fight-but-ultimately-overwhelms-you. This is a book about how-we-feel-about-our-dead. Our loved ones, are they threats, now that they're dead? Do we ever resolve what we feel about them? Do they stop being people in our hearts, even though they're not themselves? Does death terrify us because it is scary, or because we are scared of it?
I liked it. I don't know that I ever want to read it again, but I liked it.
October 10, 2010
If not for the new-agey ending/explanation for the undead, this would've been a 5 star rating for me. Minor quibble, really, though. There are scenes in this novel that are breathtaking and as emotionally authentic as it gets. Lindqvist skirts the line of sentementality beautifully (until the dopey ending, that is).
January 26, 2023
A very different take on the zombie sub-genre (but not an apocalypse,fyi), so props to Lindqvist for being creative. It was good, but it just didn't wow me. I'm used to my zombie stories being full of action, so I guess I'm spoiled by that.
October 1, 2017
Reto de la Mansión Encantada. Segundo libro.
Se me hizo una lectura lenta y poco memorable. No logré adentrarme en la historia. Y lo intenté, juro que lo intenté.
Solamente puedo decir que, para mí, el final estuvo flojo.
Son detalles que se le escaparon al autor. Y una "reseña" que yo no había podido hacer :)
Se me hizo una lectura lenta y poco memorable. No logré adentrarme en la historia. Y lo intenté, juro que lo intenté.
Solamente puedo decir que, para mí, el final estuvo flojo.
Son detalles que se le escaparon al autor. Y una "reseña" que yo no había podido hacer :)
February 29, 2012
The Swedish nation really is exceptionally open minded when it comes to the dead rising.
"THE DEAD ARE RISING!"
"ok"
This book sucks.
I have the same basic problem with it as I did Let the Right one In -Lindqvist simply isn't that good as a writer, or they are badly translated. Most likely both. The text doesn't flow as naturally as it could and the storyline is avarage (stupid more like). Maybe my standard of Horror is too high after all the King books I've read (or after the class on Horror I took last semester) but Lindqvist just isn't worth it, I'd rather read something else by someone else in the future.
"THE DEAD ARE RISING!"
"ok"
This book sucks.
I have the same basic problem with it as I did Let the Right one In -Lindqvist simply isn't that good as a writer, or they are badly translated. Most likely both. The text doesn't flow as naturally as it could and the storyline is avarage (stupid more like). Maybe my standard of Horror is too high after all the King books I've read (or after the class on Horror I took last semester) but Lindqvist just isn't worth it, I'd rather read something else by someone else in the future.
October 19, 2019
Zombies and telepathy is not usually my preferred reading but my self-imposed horror month has allowed my to expand my literature experience. I think that I actually prefer Lindqvist’s writing in this genre to king’s to be honest. It is slightly bleaker and more edgy. ‘Handling the Undead� is a tale of grief and healing, told through the heartbreaking loss of loved ones and the bonds of family. Four stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
October 10, 2019
En el ya conocido subgénero de la literatura zombi, aunque en esta historia es necesario cambiar el término por el de muerto viviente, la innovación y la búsqueda de una idea diferente no es muy habitual. De ahí que esta novela sea tan necesaria y demoledora en muchos aspectos. Capaz de estremecer y aterrar como pocas, no es un libro en el que se respeten los cánones habituales del género que creó Romero hace ya unos 50 años.
Aquí los seres fallecidos regresan. Y regresan como los seres en que se han convertido tras su muerte. No como criaturas hambrientas de carne, deseosas de encontrarte en masa para que te unas a su horda. Vuelven confundidos y tristes. Desesperanzados, impersonales y con la mínima y angustiosa conciencia de que no deberían haber regresado.
Pero esta historia no va sobre ellos. Plantéatelo por un momento. ¿Qué estarías dispuesto a hacer por volver a tener cerca a tus seres más queridos? ¿Serías capaz de amarlos aún cuando sus cuerpos se están descomponiendo? ¿Te haría ilusión que regresara a tu lado la persona que más te ha hecho sufrir?
El terror que abunda en este libro va más allá de la presencia de estos seres queridos en descomposición. Y no es poco, que hay momentos tan estremecedores que será imposible que no se te erice la piel. Momentos repulsivos, incómodos y provocadores. Pero este libro va de otra cosa. Va de mirarte en el espejo y aceptar nuestro egoísmo. De nuestra crueldad innata cuando nos sacan de nuestra zona de confort. De remordimientos y, sobre todo, de descansar de una maldita vez en paz.
Aquí los seres fallecidos regresan. Y regresan como los seres en que se han convertido tras su muerte. No como criaturas hambrientas de carne, deseosas de encontrarte en masa para que te unas a su horda. Vuelven confundidos y tristes. Desesperanzados, impersonales y con la mínima y angustiosa conciencia de que no deberían haber regresado.
Pero esta historia no va sobre ellos. Plantéatelo por un momento. ¿Qué estarías dispuesto a hacer por volver a tener cerca a tus seres más queridos? ¿Serías capaz de amarlos aún cuando sus cuerpos se están descomponiendo? ¿Te haría ilusión que regresara a tu lado la persona que más te ha hecho sufrir?
El terror que abunda en este libro va más allá de la presencia de estos seres queridos en descomposición. Y no es poco, que hay momentos tan estremecedores que será imposible que no se te erice la piel. Momentos repulsivos, incómodos y provocadores. Pero este libro va de otra cosa. Va de mirarte en el espejo y aceptar nuestro egoísmo. De nuestra crueldad innata cuando nos sacan de nuestra zona de confort. De remordimientos y, sobre todo, de descansar de una maldita vez en paz.
July 6, 2012
Preface to review - I'm not a zombie fan. I'm specist that way.
This isn't the Walking Dead. Thank god. If you liked "The Monkey's Paw", you should give this book a try, for it harkens more to that anything else.
In the city of Stockholm (beautiful city btw) and only in the city of Stockholm, some dead people have come back to life, maybe. Kinda. It could be the second coming who knows.
This book because it is a microchasm. Lindqvist keeps the focus on a select few, each of whom has a lost a family who is now part of the "reliving" (the risen dead). The book is more of look at how people would response to that, and that makes the book very interesting.
I must say the reason why I gave the book four stars comes down to a few paragraphs on page 182. It those few paragraphs Lindqvist examines the following in an extremely accurate and powerful manner.
1. the attachment of a reader to a book
2. the fact that some books have a wider influence than their authors believe.
3. The connection between the reader and the author
It made me want to cry it was so brillantly written.
This isn't the Walking Dead. Thank god. If you liked "The Monkey's Paw", you should give this book a try, for it harkens more to that anything else.
In the city of Stockholm (beautiful city btw) and only in the city of Stockholm, some dead people have come back to life, maybe. Kinda. It could be the second coming who knows.
This book because it is a microchasm. Lindqvist keeps the focus on a select few, each of whom has a lost a family who is now part of the "reliving" (the risen dead). The book is more of look at how people would response to that, and that makes the book very interesting.
I must say the reason why I gave the book four stars comes down to a few paragraphs on page 182. It those few paragraphs Lindqvist examines the following in an extremely accurate and powerful manner.
1. the attachment of a reader to a book
2. the fact that some books have a wider influence than their authors believe.
3. The connection between the reader and the author
It made me want to cry it was so brillantly written.
July 15, 2010
The first two-thirds of ‘Handling the Undead� are brilliant. Rather than go the traditional Romero route with his zombie story, Lindqvist tries to present the tale almost within real life parameters.
After a heat-wave and a surge of electricity, the recently deceased of Sweden start to rise. There is chaos, particularly at the hospitals, and the apparatus of state is forced to move in quickly (and clumsily) to sort out the mess. But these zombies are not flesh-eating, brain-craving monsters. They do not walk with their arms out-stretched in graveyards or dance to Michael Jackson songs. Instead they are rotting bodies suddenly � and seemingly harmlessly � returned to life, and those who can communicate have no more idea why than anybody else.
Clearly dead people walking around is a disturbing phenomena and the experts work hard to understand it. The wider public is initially fascinated, but then goes back to normal life with picnics and comedy clubs and so on. And these details of scientific analysis, coupled with the real world managing to survive (as well as various inserts showing Prime Ministerial press conferences, official reaction and television news reports), all add an air of authenticity to what is obviously a fantastical scenario.
At the emotional centre of the book are three families who have each been recently bereaved, and now are having to cope with the unexpected return of their loved ones. These tales don’t overlap as much as I would have liked, and it can seem like reading three separate short stories that have been knit together � but Lindqvist does have a good feel for his characters, and it’s hard not to empathise with their plight and their responses.
Where the novel fails though is in its final third. Having created this wonderful set-up in a real-life world, then built up superb characters in an incredible situation, it seems as if Lindqvist has no idea what to do next. This is a definitely a book which finishes with a whimper rather than a bang, limping its way to a close when one expected so much more of it.
After a heat-wave and a surge of electricity, the recently deceased of Sweden start to rise. There is chaos, particularly at the hospitals, and the apparatus of state is forced to move in quickly (and clumsily) to sort out the mess. But these zombies are not flesh-eating, brain-craving monsters. They do not walk with their arms out-stretched in graveyards or dance to Michael Jackson songs. Instead they are rotting bodies suddenly � and seemingly harmlessly � returned to life, and those who can communicate have no more idea why than anybody else.
Clearly dead people walking around is a disturbing phenomena and the experts work hard to understand it. The wider public is initially fascinated, but then goes back to normal life with picnics and comedy clubs and so on. And these details of scientific analysis, coupled with the real world managing to survive (as well as various inserts showing Prime Ministerial press conferences, official reaction and television news reports), all add an air of authenticity to what is obviously a fantastical scenario.
At the emotional centre of the book are three families who have each been recently bereaved, and now are having to cope with the unexpected return of their loved ones. These tales don’t overlap as much as I would have liked, and it can seem like reading three separate short stories that have been knit together � but Lindqvist does have a good feel for his characters, and it’s hard not to empathise with their plight and their responses.
Where the novel fails though is in its final third. Having created this wonderful set-up in a real-life world, then built up superb characters in an incredible situation, it seems as if Lindqvist has no idea what to do next. This is a definitely a book which finishes with a whimper rather than a bang, limping its way to a close when one expected so much more of it.
October 23, 2010
Fantastic study on how people deal with death and dying. Not a typical zombie apocalypse story. A strange electrical current occurs and about 2000 of the recently departed are returning home. According to a character Flora when asked by her brother about what the dead are like, she replies "They're nice." In the end, it's not that simple.
Difficult to read, weighty themes and topics. Not a light hearted read at all.
Ultimately a human story about loss and how to deal with it. Certainly not an action story, some would say that it's not a horror story, but I would disagree. It's not a blood squirting, face eating kind of story. The horror comes from less expected sources, more subtle, less obvious.
And that's what makes this a great book. It's not what you'll expect, and that's a good thing. Typical zombie stories are typical. Zombies are everywhere, people band together, don't always agree, some get eaten, tension... This story is more about how people react, cope and eventually become comfortable with a soul crushingly horrific situation.
Highly recommend.
Difficult to read, weighty themes and topics. Not a light hearted read at all.
Ultimately a human story about loss and how to deal with it. Certainly not an action story, some would say that it's not a horror story, but I would disagree. It's not a blood squirting, face eating kind of story. The horror comes from less expected sources, more subtle, less obvious.
And that's what makes this a great book. It's not what you'll expect, and that's a good thing. Typical zombie stories are typical. Zombies are everywhere, people band together, don't always agree, some get eaten, tension... This story is more about how people react, cope and eventually become comfortable with a soul crushingly horrific situation.
Highly recommend.
October 25, 2011
I had very very high hopes for this book.
And I kept on reading to the bitter end, hoping my hopes would be realized.
Still not sure what the hell I was reading.
It's like if Virginia Woolf set out to write a zombie book, except I think Virginia Woolf could have done amazing things with that. Let's say a subpar zombie Virginia Woolf was dug up and resurrected and tasked to write this book in exchange for brains. Maybe then.
So basically this isn't horror at all. Spooky cover, Stephen King reference on the cover, are all very misleading.
So fine, it's not horror, it's some existentialist elegy to death and loss, okay. I just didn't think that was very good either. I didn't even dislike the characters, because that would be evoking strong emotions and I found this book incredibly BLAH.
I found the ending terrible too. And obviously it was planned from the beginning since the opening scene--but I got to that last chapter and could barely read I was rolling my eyes so hard.
And I kept on reading to the bitter end, hoping my hopes would be realized.
Still not sure what the hell I was reading.
It's like if Virginia Woolf set out to write a zombie book, except I think Virginia Woolf could have done amazing things with that. Let's say a subpar zombie Virginia Woolf was dug up and resurrected and tasked to write this book in exchange for brains. Maybe then.
So basically this isn't horror at all. Spooky cover, Stephen King reference on the cover, are all very misleading.
So fine, it's not horror, it's some existentialist elegy to death and loss, okay. I just didn't think that was very good either. I didn't even dislike the characters, because that would be evoking strong emotions and I found this book incredibly BLAH.
I found the ending terrible too. And obviously it was planned from the beginning since the opening scene--but I got to that last chapter and could barely read I was rolling my eyes so hard.
October 23, 2017
I think I expected a hauntingly sizzling, howling, groaning, shrieking read, but the only real onomatopoeia came from me, the moaning reader - sending this book zooming through the air, raspy pages a-fluttering right up until it thunked dully into the fireplace, anticlimactic crackling of burning pages followed by an eventual dissatisfying smoky, puffing sizzling out - the grunting reader clopping and shuffling it's creaky bones away.
(No actual books were harmed in the making of this review.)
I am okay with, and in this case even expected, a different take on a classic horror theme, but... this just did not do it for me. I felt like there was so much promise in the premise, so many possible directions to go in, and a building-up which never crescendo-ed, but merely dropped away in surprisingly undramatic fashion. So, yeah the story didn't really work, but I am pretty sure it could have if the correct structure and style had been adopted, it was a mismatch. To me the story could have largely followed the same themes of dealing with death and loss, but in that case needed more emotionally driven writing, something less journalistic and distant - it did not hit the right cords. I didn't end up caring for the characters, I felt for their general pain, but that was because of an empathy I have for such loss, not because I was convinced that the characters actually felt it. The book was a little too flat and/or discordant, relying on the reader to inject the emotion themselves. There were scenes that felt genuinely creepy, but then they took away from the other themes that were developed and the creepy factor was not committed to either leaving the reader in an awkward middle ground, believing none of it. Meh, I don't know, maybe I am just a humbug. Ho hum, not a terrible book, there are some elements to be appreciated, but for this reader at this time, just so much middling mewling blah.
(No actual books were harmed in the making of this review.)
I am okay with, and in this case even expected, a different take on a classic horror theme, but... this just did not do it for me. I felt like there was so much promise in the premise, so many possible directions to go in, and a building-up which never crescendo-ed, but merely dropped away in surprisingly undramatic fashion. So, yeah the story didn't really work, but I am pretty sure it could have if the correct structure and style had been adopted, it was a mismatch. To me the story could have largely followed the same themes of dealing with death and loss, but in that case needed more emotionally driven writing, something less journalistic and distant - it did not hit the right cords. I didn't end up caring for the characters, I felt for their general pain, but that was because of an empathy I have for such loss, not because I was convinced that the characters actually felt it. The book was a little too flat and/or discordant, relying on the reader to inject the emotion themselves. There were scenes that felt genuinely creepy, but then they took away from the other themes that were developed and the creepy factor was not committed to either leaving the reader in an awkward middle ground, believing none of it. Meh, I don't know, maybe I am just a humbug. Ho hum, not a terrible book, there are some elements to be appreciated, but for this reader at this time, just so much middling mewling blah.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,387 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.