It has been the observation of many a pop culture maven that whenever things get a little shaky here in the United States we turn to our horror films and novels as a source of uncertain comfort. Why? Maybe it’s a kind of purgative: we externalize our fears, face them and thus bring them under some semblance of control.
For many years now, zombies have been our horror drug of choice – the books of Max Brooks and The Walking Dead being the most popular examples – and it’s one that certainly suits these uncertain times. What better metaphor for the dog-eat-dog anxieties of the Great Recession than facing the unholy hungers of our newly-risen former friends and neighbors?
But what if these zombies weren’t entirely repugnant? Could there be a place for sympathy in a world where the living are hunted by the dead? Award-winning writer Daryl Gregory answers this question in his novel Raising Stony Mayhall.
In the wake of the zombie apocalypse a family finds the body of a young woman in the snow clutching a dead infant. When the infant opens its eyes and begins to stir, the family brings it home. This baby, however, has no pulse and doesn’t breathe. Against the rules of their community, the family keeps the zombie infant and names it Stony. Once Stony leaves his community he discovers an undead world not unlike the one he left. This is a community of sorts, but is it one that will have him or that he even wants to be a part of?
Daryl Gregory’s Raising Stony Mayhall is a different sort of zombie novel, but like all of the best ones, it uses the undead as a way to ask bigger questions about society and the human condition as a whole. This is a book that you’ll experience as much as read. It is possible that by spending time with Stony and his fellow dead you’ll feel more keenly what it means to live.
