2010 has been very good to this zombie fan already with ‘The Reapers are the Angels’, in particular, blowing my expectations clean out of the water and set to feature prominently in my ‘best of 2010’ list at the end of the year. Apparently, 2010 is the year that just keeps on giving if you’re a zombie fan. When I picked up Bob Fingerman’s ‘Pariah’ the concept already had me looking forward to an enthralling read. What was inside was even better. Read this review and then go straight out and grab yourself a copy of ‘Pariah’, it’s worth it.
The end of the world has come. Despite the best attempts of the National Guard there are over eight million zombies on the streets of New York City, all looking to take a bite out of the living. All that is left to the last remaining survivors is to take shelter and await the inevitable. That is just what a group on the Upper East Side are doing. Their apartment block has been boarded up but while it keeps them safe there is nowhere left for them to go but inwards. Even if the constant arguing doesn’t spark off into something more serious there’s no doubt that starvation will kill them. If only there was some way that they could get to the supermarket across the street...
Then, one day, it happens. A lone teenager girl appears who is able to walk the undead streets of New York unharmed. The world is about to get a lot bigger once again and that means a lot more room for danger to come pouring in...
Sometimes you read a book by an author who has nailed their subject matter so perfectly that you find yourself wondering if they’re actually writing from personal experience. Bob Fingerman is one of those writers. I finished ‘Pariah’ and found myself wondering if he’d written it, over a period of months, in a boarded up house while trying to fend off the attentions of the living dead. Fingerman has a control of this particular subject matter that can only realistically come from either personal experience or some utterly messed up nightmares...
Fingerman sets the tone very early on and then proceeds to dial the tension right up to breaking point and beyond. Claustrophobia and hunger are the orders of the day in the early stages and Fingerman leaves us in no doubt as to what this entails. Blunt descriptions of the physical affects of starvation and the constant knowledge that there are thousands of zombies just outside the walls combine to form an intense narrative with an ending that cannot be in any doubt.
Or can it? Life goes on as normal (or as near to normal as possible) inside the apartment block and this refusal to surrender offers hope as a counterpoint to the bleakness. People fall in love or attempt to maintain relationships in a completely new set of circumstances while others seek to make their lives better by somehow finding what they need in this new landscape. This is what made the book compulsive reading for me, the fact that even though the ending surely couldn’t be in any doubt it somehow was. Fingerman shows us that while the living dead are implacable, so is humanity with a cast of characters who are close to the edge but still won’t give up. The relationships between Alan and Ellen and Abe and Ruth make for some real heart wrenching reading at times. Relationships are never easy...
If there was any slight criticism to the characters, for me it laid in the fact that Fingerman’s homage to Romero (who he acknowledges) was maybe a little too obvious; certainly obvious enough for me to be able to predict who would live and who would die by the end of the book. A little bit of the tension (on that side of things) was lost but the colour that Fingerman lends to his characters makes up for this. The residents of the block aren’t there to be liked but Fingerman does make sure that their lives are there to be followed. I’m looking at Eddie in particular whose descent into madness is compelling to follow, no matter what excesses it leads him into.
And then Mona arrives...
Not only does the arrival of Mona spark everything off, making for an exciting ending as various agendas burst into life, but it adds a tantalisingly element of mystery to the proceedings. How does Mona walk through the streets of New York and remain unharmed? The answer is understated but makes sense and the beauty of it is that it only applies to her.
What’s more interesting to follow are the reactions that her presence engenders. A group that is at each others throats, before she arrives, cannot deal with the fragmenting affect that follows and this ramps the plot up to steam through to a very powerful ending. Fingerman holds to the maxim that the most dangerous thing in a zombie uprising is the thoughtlessness of humanity in the face of a far greater threat. That maxim is very much evident here and drives the plot to conclusions that you may see coming but I found that I just had to stick around for.
‘Pariah’ is an intense read that you will find you have no choice but to finish. Humanity and the living dead collide to form a read that sits proudly at the top of the zombie genre, pick it up now.
Nine and a Half out of Ten
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