Warm Bodies

"I am dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it. I'm sorry I can't properly introduce myself, but I don't have a name anymore. Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries. Mine might have started with an 'R', but that's all I have now. That's funny because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people's names. My friend 'M' says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can't smile, because your lips are rotted off."

With an opening like that, it's hard not to get pulled into Warm Bodies. A zombie love story is right up my alley. As soon as I heard the movie was based on a book, I knew I would read it. Issac Marion brings to life a lovable character in "R", a zombie haunted by the memories of a young man whose brain he consumed. It is through these stolen moments that "R" first meets Julie, a beacon of light in a very dark world. Not exactly the kind of meet-cute we've grown accustomed to in modern literature, but that's what makes it so captivating.

"I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the space shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonize it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect."

Part romance, part morality tale, Marion's unlikely lovers share a bond so powerful, it could change the world. But change is hard, for the Living and the deadest of the Dead, leaving "R" and Julie trapped between the two.

"But it does make me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are."

Warm bodies is diamond mine of rough, uncut stones in dire need of a good polish. Occasionally, though, a perfectly clear and radiant gem will sparkle up at you from the page and those moments are priceless.

"It's still night, and I can hear my wife having sex with her new lover behind the door of a nearby staff room. I try to ignore them. I already walked in on them once today. I heard noises, the door was wide open, so I walked in. There they were, naked, awkwardly slamming their bodies together, grunting and groping each other's pale flesh. He was limp. She was dry. They watched each other with puzzled expressions, as if some unknown force had shoved them together into this moist tangle of limbs. Their eyes seemed to ask each other, "Who the hell are you?" as they jiggled and jerked like meat marionettes." 

As you might imagine, given the premise of the story, this is no saccharine sweet love story. There's blood, guts, gore, cussing and, yes, even zombie sex. It's not overdone, though. There's just enough to keep you turning the pages. The movie is PG-13, but the book is, rather appropriately, rated "R" and I'd give it a B grade. It's a fun and frightfully entertaining read, but it would have benefited greatly from an extra edit or two.