Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I've had this book languishing on my shelves since it came out several years ago but when I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie I knew it was time to give it the attention it was due. As you're well aware by now, faithful reader, I'm a huge Jane Austen fan and so I was interested to see how zombies would be incorporated into the narrative. I was not disappointed. Most of the essentials remained the same but the ones that were changed were so funny and fit so well with the new adaptation that I didn't mind in the least. This version's Elizabeth Bennet is a warrior for the Crown in the fight against the unmentionables. Her sole goal is to eradicate as many of Satan's creatures as she can and so she is even more forthright than Austen's show more original if you can believe it. There was gore, baudy humor, and fights in defense of honor. It was a fun read and I think if you're a fan of Austen you should see what it's all about and if you're not a fan of Austen this might be your doorway into the sublime. show less

I love the concept, but I was not impressed by the execution. I wish Grahame-Smith had paid better homage to both Jane Austen and zombies.

Grahame-Smith has taken the original text of Pride and Prejudice and simply inserted zombies... and ninjas, and a lot of gory combat. But the insertions feel pretty forced to me.

First of all, I wish this had been done by someone who is more steeped in Regency and Gothic literature. I think Dianne Setterfield or Lindsey Faye or Gail Carrington would have done a much better job of really making the zombies fit into Jane Austen's world, instead of making it feel like they were just stuck in. Although I appreciate how Grahame-Smith changed as little of the original work as possible, I think the book would show more really have benefited from some deeper changes to make it feel like the zombies were really a part of the story, not just stuck in. Literature of this era is full of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena - it would have been easy to make the zombies feel like a more integral part of the book, and to make them more creepy.

Secondly, I don't think this is a good addition to the corpus of zombie literature (see what I did there?). Usually, zombies symbolize something - conformity, or how capitalism turns everyone into faceless consumers, or some other societal anxiety like climate change or automation. In this book, the zombies don't seem to stand for anything. There are some amazing missed opportunities here - zombies could easily represent industrialization and how the new industrialized working class threatens the cleanliness and safety of the upper classes, or could be a result of some new science or mechanization, but Grahame-Smith doesn't make any of those potential connections.

Grahame-Smith also adds ninjas to the book, which makes no sense at all to me. The Bennet sisters all go to China and master Shaolin martial arts, but they are treated with disdain because they studied in China instead of the more reputable Japan. Everyone has a dojo where they practice their deadly arts, and rich people have a retinue of ninjas. There are weird ideas of honor (Lizzie gives herself seven wounds to express her shame when she learns that Darcy has paid Wickham's debts) which have no place in British aristocratic society, at least not without a lot of other major changes that are totally out of place in Regency England. These ideas of honor and Eastern martial arts are also very stereotypical and (to the best of my knowledge) don't actually represent anything that was truly present in 18th-century Asia. Perhaps there is room here for some colonialist critique, but Grahame-Smith doesn't go there.

One of the few things I did like was how the verbal sparring in the original book gets transformed into physical sparring here, especially the scene where Darcy first proposes to Elizabeth, which turns into a big battle between the two of them. However, I did not like the fact that all of the nobility, even the aged Lady de Bourgh, are exceptional warriors. One of the main themes of zombie literature and movies is that the people fighting zombies are just ordinary people. It's possible for ordinary people who have no training as fighters to kill zombies en masse because zombies are dumb and predictable - you don't need to be a sneaky ninja to kill them. The whole appeal of zombie literature is that they seem like a big impossible threat, but ordinary people, with a little bit of cleverness and cooperation, can kill them. Part of the reason Jane Austen's novels are so appealing is that the characters feel so relatable - even to modern readers, we all recognize parts of ourselves in Elizabeth Bennet, and we all want to win our own Darcy. So making the Bennet sisters into exceptional warriors not only defeats the whole purpose of the zombie genre, it also defeats the appeal of Austen's work.

One final critique: Lizzie's skill at killing zombies also turns into skill at killing living humans. Any time she is mad at someone, she fantasizes about killing them. She murders lots of ninjas just to show off her skill (and the expendability and anonymity of all Asian people in the book is another problem). The constant threat of death by zombie doesn't make her value human life any more. This really makes Lizzie hard for the reader to relate to, which further subverts the whole point of Austen's work.

It's a shame, because there is so much potential in this concept. If zombies had represented the industrialized working class and the major shifts in the economic structure of society and how those threatened the landed aristocracy, if the characters had just been ordinary people who had to band together against the zombie threat, and if Lizzie and Darcy had fallen in love because they were forced to fight together against a common enemy, despite being normal people with no special fighting skills, this would have been a much better book. show less

I hated this book with a passion. I never truly understood before reading this what it means to be a great writer and what it means to be a poor writer who throws a bunch of words together without creating anything of depth or meaning.
The one star is for an amazing idea, so poorly executed that it appears to not have been edited. There are thousands of fan-fics on the web that add something a little different to the original story. This is like a fan fic that takes the original, without properly understanding it, and randomly adds things that don't make sense to anyone else. Randomly inserting that Elizabeth was polishing her musket or is trained in martial arts does NOT make this a zombie, action or horror book. It's lazy, meaningless show more and poor writing. The zombie action scenes were few and far between, did not advance the action in any way and did not appear to be a metaphor for anything, which they should have. The jokes could barely be called jokes as none of them were funny. If it wasn't for Austen's original prose, the book would be unreadable.
Mainly though, this book just made me sad for its lost potential. show less

I'm ever upper-class high society
God's gift to ballroom notoriety
And I always fill my ballroom, the event is never small
The social pages say I've got the biggest balls of all!
- AC/DC, "Big Balls"

Yes, if you didn't get your fill of jokes during teabagging week, fear not; Seth Grahame-Smith is here to save both you and Jane Austen with numerous double entendres about just what excites upper-middle class girls in 19th century England.

"Balls are always a subject which makes a lady energetic."
"It depends on who's throwing them, Mr. Darcy."

Of course, that's not the most obvious change that Pride And Prejudice has gone through here. While the basic plot, setting, characters and even most of Austen's original text remain the same, Seth show more Grahame-Smith has tweaked everything a little bit; London now is a walled-off fortress where few people get in or out, violence is part of everyday life, and the Bennet sisters have trained with Shaolin monks to become some of the fiercest warriors in Hertfordshire. Which doesn't exactly help their marriage chances in a country which, despite everything, still expects a wife to submit to her husband and stay at home.

My sisters and I cannot spend any substantial time searching for Wickham, as we are each commanded by His Majesty to defend Hertfordshire from all enemies until such time as we are dead, rendered lame, or married.

The reason for all of this, obviously, are the titular zombies who have been terrorizing England for the past 50-odd years, and which offer plenty of excuses for inserting action scenes into the story - both from fights against the undead, and from the generally much more violent society that their presence has created. See! Hordes of zombies attack the ball where Elizabeth and Darcy meet for the first time! See! One of Elizabeth's closest friends slowly turn into a zombie! See! Elizabeth Bennet fight off three ninjas blindfolded and eat the last one's still-beating heart before him! See! Certain characters get exactly what's coming to them!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

It's completely insane, of course. But the really insane thing is, it works. Obviously, most of it is played for laughs (though there's enough respect for the source material to keep it from turning into outright parody), but Grahame-Smith actually uses the zombie plot to underline and comment on Austen's themes. In classic horror fashion, the monsters work as an embodiment of the less tangible problems in life, the everyday struggle becomes an actual life-or-death fight. I'll give you three guesses as to how the confrontation between Elizabeth and Lady Catherine plays out. Hint: it involves katanas. Elizabeth fights society's norms and she fights zombies.

Elizabeth lifted her skirt, disregarding modesty, and delivered a swift kick to the creature's head, which exploded in a cloud of brittle skull and bone.

But mostly, it's just a lot of gory fun. So Grahame-Smith can't match Austen's dialogue (who can?), so it all gets a bit predictable (especially if you're read P&P before), but who cares? It's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, people. And they've got the biggest balls of them all. show less

Playaway audio performed by Katherine Kellgren
3.5***

Mr and Mrs Bennet are parents to five girls who must marry well because Mr Bennet’s estate is entailed to a distant male relative. When wealthy and single Charles Bingley takes the nearby Netherfield Park estate, Mrs Bennet immediately begins plotting to have her girls cross his path, in the hopes that he will marry one of them. He falls for the eldest Bennet girl, Jane. His good friend Fitzwilliam Darcy is also introduced to the girls, but when he blatantly refuses to dance with Elizabeth Bennet at a ball where “gentlemen are scarce and more than one lady is without a partner” he is seen as arrogant and prideful. Still, there is something about Elizabeth’s “fine eyes” … show more not to mention her acknowledged accomplishments as a zombie fighter!

This book fulfilled a challenge in a Good Reads group to read from a genre that I normally avoid. I am SOooo not into zombies that I figured this one would fill the bill. I wasn’t expecting much – in fact, I expected to have to force my way through it. But I was pleasantly surprised by this take-off on Jane Austen’s classic Regency Romance.

Grahame-Smith was smart to use many of Miss Austen’s own words and dialogue. I have a feeling that readers who have never read Austen’s original might actually be inspired to seek it out after enjoying this farce. I sure hope so. Readers who have enjoyed the original classic will surely recognize Austen’s brilliance. Most of the references to the “plagued individual” or “unmentionables” are pretty nicely woven into the plot. There are a few longer scenes that really forced me out of the period, but even these are pretty entertaining. I’m thinking especially of Elizabeth demonstrating her prowess against Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s expert ninjas … and later showing her exceptional finger strength with a hand stand that converts to a one-hand stand, and finally a one-finger stand. Bravo, Lizzy!

Katherine Kellgren does a great job on the audio. Her pacing is good and she has sufficient skill with voices to differentiate most of the characters (although Jane & Elizabeth do sound much alike). I loved how she voiced Charlotte Lucas! As is my usual practice with audio books, I also had a copy of the text on hand, in this case the deluxe hardcover edition. It includes some very interesting illustrations; some are very entertaining (Lizzy kicking Darcy in the face following his impassioned proposal), but many are way too ghoulish and gory for me (my imagination was MUCH less bloody and graphic). show less

A very silly, goofy book. I really enjoyed reading a zombie novel where the zombie apocalypse is portrayed as a minor inconvenience that just lets the characters have a bit of fun killing every once in a while. Truly all period pieces should have zombies.

3.25 stars

I don’t think a summary is really needed for this one, but not only are the Bennett sisters looking for husbands with the help of their mother, but the girls in this book are also all trained (they’ve been to the Orient and have a dojo for further training) to fight zombies – those with the “plague”.

This was ok. It does surprise me that I rated the original so high, as on parodies such as this, the story itself seems so slow and not something I would usually like. I suppose I was in the right frame of mind when I first read it? Anyway, with the addition of the zombies, a couple of big fight scenes livened things up a bit! I was also amused with Charlotte’s illness. The zombies did seem quite out of place in the show more book. The notes at the end of the book were interesting and one did touch on how it might not have been so out of place to add zombies into the book with the popularity of gothic fiction at the time it was written. The other fun extra at the end was a list of “discussion” questions – now those were amusing! show less