Most of the zombie novel’s I’ve read look at how the survivors, well, survive and how they set about rebuilding society. Bob Fingerman, however, looks at what happens when you strip away civilization and the survivors are just waiting to die. Pariah is an extremely bleak book because of this.
This might seem unrelated, but I have a point to his digression. Earlier today I was listening to RadioWest’s show about online comments. The host and his various guests were trying to work out why comments are so vulgar/racist/sexist/stupid, etc. etc. My personal theory is that online comments do the same thing that Fingerman’s zombies did. They strip away the veneers of civilization. If you don’t have a reason to keep your worst ideas under control, then you won’t. Online, no one knows who you are even if you sign your posts. In Pariah, there’s no one to impress and it would be inhuman to turn someone out even if they turned out to be a truly awful human being and it would probably be safer to do so.
Pariah moves back and forth between “then” and “now,” spending most of the time in the characters’ present. (If that makes sense. It’s tricky when the author uses the then/now chronology.) The narrative also bounced around among a slight handful of survivors who have holed up in a barricaded apartment building. They are entirely surrounded by zombies and entirely alone. They are slowly starving and dehydrating to death. It’s too dangerous to make a break for it, even though there’s a grocery store cruelly within view. Their numbers are slowly being whittled down by misfortune. The more I got to listen into one particular character’s thoughts, I kept hoping he’d be the next one to go because he was an absolute bastard.
When a girl who appears to be immune to the zombies strolls down the road one day, the characters start to see some hope–not a lot, just that their lot might improve with fresh supplies. But once they stop starving, the utter bastard starts to get dangerous again. You just know that things are not going to end well.
This is a tough, challenging book to read primarily because you get to hear the worst of their thoughts, their jealousies, their lusts, their violent mental revenges, and all the rest of the thoughts that belong locked away deep in one’s subconscious. But I think it was a worthwhile reason exactly because Fingerman shows you these things. As I said, no other zombie book that I’ve read has gone in this direction before. I think Pariah might actually be a more accurate depiction of what would happen if zombies were real.