I’ve read a lot of zombie books and watched a lot of zombie movies, but this is the first time I’ve heard the zombie’s side of the story. S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament follows Andy, a recently resurrected zombie as he tries to figure out why he’s alive (read: undead) and what his purpose is. As I read, I thought that this book was a horror novel with aspirations to be a literary novel. While there’s a lot more action that I’ve come to expect from literary novels, there’s as much introspection and pensiveness. And, of course, there is no happy ending.
The book actually begins somewhere near the end, when Andy wakes from a drunken binge to realize that his parents are dead. The perspective then shifts back a number of weeks and we meet Andy again as he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting, to therapy sessions with a particularly clueless psychologist, and passive aggressively spars with his unhappy parents. We learn that Breathers (people still alive) treat zombies with contempt. Frat boys are a particular danger, and several zombies meet their end at their hands.
The action really starts to take off when Andy and his cadre discover the joys of snacking on Breathers. Andy discovers a little will and starts to agitate for zombie rights. He stands on corners with signs and tries to ride a bus (zombies are banned from public transportation). After an unfortunate incident at the Social Security office to try and get his number reinstated, Andy gets shot by a security guard and lands back in the zombie holding pen at the local SPCA. (Yes, Animal Control rounds up loose zombies.) His friends call in the media and all of a sudden, it looks like Andy might get the legal rights he wanted in the first place.
Meanwhile, all the zombies are snacking on homeless people and troublesome Breathers.
Unfortunately, even thought there’s more action in the second half, the narrative gets more and more unfocused. It seems like Andy becomes more and more a mouthpiece for the author to comment on racism (vitalism), civil rights, and the media–all while trying to keep the body count high.
Breathers is a very strange read. I’m not sure I’d recommend it to any but the most die-hard, must-read-everything zombie fans or to people who like their literary fiction more than a little off kilter.