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Sooooooo, I had the chance yesterday to see the movie adaptation of Pontypool Changes Everything, Pontypool. The script was written by Tony Burgess as well as the book, not that you could really tell. I'll start with the book, I spent a lot of time today at work really thinking about why I didn't like this book. It had Zombies, PLUS it was set in rural Ontario/Toronto, which was my original interest in the story to begin with. Who doesn't want to read about Zombie madness taking place in their hometown? I was SO excited to read this book. Why then, did it take me almost three months to finish reading a book that was under three hundred pages long?
The answer I believe is that although the book is represented as one full length novel, it actually reads more like a series of short stories. All of the stories involve the same Zombie outbreak, but each individual's story is pretty much read from beginning to end, and then it's on to another unrelated story of a new character who is also dealing with the Zombie madness. I think that's ultimately why I didn't like this book. I detest short stories, and it read too much like a book of short stories than it did a novel. When I first started the book I tore through the first hundred pages, and it was around the end of those that I first noticed something was amiss. The book opens with a man from small town Ontario first noticing the outbreak, and you follow him on his heroic journey to Toronto where his ex and baby boy are now living. He races around downtown Toronto amidst military and Zombies alike and finally does rescue and escape with his baby son...who happens to be addicted to heroin, but that's beside the point. I realized things were going awry when the main character was bitten by a Zombie before page 100. Everyone knows what that means, you turn, game over, do not pass go, do not collect $200, nothing left but eating brains for you buddy.
But he doesn't turn, because this isn't that sort of Zombie-ness. This is a more evolved Zombie sickness...it travels through words, and you catch it by conversing in, and the understanding of, the English language. It's far more complicated than that. I read the explanation of the Zombie causing what-have-you (because it's not a virus) at least three times, and I still do not fully understand it. But you don't get it by being bitten. That didn't help our original main character, he dies shortly into the first hundred pages anyways.
Then we move on to another character, and read their story all the way through, then another, and another, until finally the final two story lines converge and a young girl living in an old fishing hut and having an incestuous relationship with her brother (I think their ages are about 12 and 15) hacks a t.v. personality from Toronto to death because she thinks he's a Zombie. He was really just there to show the fishing hut to his intern, for reasons which I don't believe are ever full explained. Then comes the kicker, which made me really hate this book. She gives birth to some sort of mutant incest baby which runs away as soon as it's born, tearing it's own umbilical cord out of it's mother as it runs for the hills. Then some hunters kill the kids who were hiding in the hut (oh did I mention the kids were also eating Zombie flesh to survive?) and then boom, the book is over. None too soon if you ask me.
There are so many things about the kids' story line that I hated. Besides the incest (who has sex with their brother just because you're confined in a fishing hut for about a year?) Who decides that they're going to start eating Zombie flesh? Learn to fish people! The worst part though is that the Zombie outbreak had been contained and the kids were hiding out in the hut for about 11 months too long. If they'd just snuck into the nearest town to check things out, they would have been rescued. Idiots. Then the crazy mutant fetus which essentially runs off into the hills and then to the bottom of a lake...no reason for that in the story at all.
I give this book a 5/10. I guess it's not it's fault that I hate short stories, or novels made up of short stories pretending to be novels.
The answer I believe is that although the book is represented as one full length novel, it actually reads more like a series of short stories. All of the stories involve the same Zombie outbreak, but each individual's story is pretty much read from beginning to end, and then it's on to another unrelated story of a new character who is also dealing with the Zombie madness. I think that's ultimately why I didn't like this book. I detest short stories, and it read too much like a book of short stories than it did a novel. When I first started the book I tore through the first hundred pages, and it was around the end of those that I first noticed something was amiss. The book opens with a man from small town Ontario first noticing the outbreak, and you follow him on his heroic journey to Toronto where his ex and baby boy are now living. He races around downtown Toronto amidst military and Zombies alike and finally does rescue and escape with his baby son...who happens to be addicted to heroin, but that's beside the point. I realized things were going awry when the main character was bitten by a Zombie before page 100. Everyone knows what that means, you turn, game over, do not pass go, do not collect $200, nothing left but eating brains for you buddy.
But he doesn't turn, because this isn't that sort of Zombie-ness. This is a more evolved Zombie sickness...it travels through words, and you catch it by conversing in, and the understanding of, the English language. It's far more complicated than that. I read the explanation of the Zombie causing what-have-you (because it's not a virus) at least three times, and I still do not fully understand it. But you don't get it by being bitten. That didn't help our original main character, he dies shortly into the first hundred pages anyways.
Then we move on to another character, and read their story all the way through, then another, and another, until finally the final two story lines converge and a young girl living in an old fishing hut and having an incestuous relationship with her brother (I think their ages are about 12 and 15) hacks a t.v. personality from Toronto to death because she thinks he's a Zombie. He was really just there to show the fishing hut to his intern, for reasons which I don't believe are ever full explained. Then comes the kicker, which made me really hate this book. She gives birth to some sort of mutant incest baby which runs away as soon as it's born, tearing it's own umbilical cord out of it's mother as it runs for the hills. Then some hunters kill the kids who were hiding in the hut (oh did I mention the kids were also eating Zombie flesh to survive?) and then boom, the book is over. None too soon if you ask me.
There are so many things about the kids' story line that I hated. Besides the incest (who has sex with their brother just because you're confined in a fishing hut for about a year?) Who decides that they're going to start eating Zombie flesh? Learn to fish people! The worst part though is that the Zombie outbreak had been contained and the kids were hiding out in the hut for about 11 months too long. If they'd just snuck into the nearest town to check things out, they would have been rescued. Idiots. Then the crazy mutant fetus which essentially runs off into the hills and then to the bottom of a lake...no reason for that in the story at all.
I give this book a 5/10. I guess it's not it's fault that I hate short stories, or novels made up of short stories pretending to be novels.