Friday, May 20, 2011

My Life as a White Trash Zombie-Diana Rowland

My Life as a White Trash Zombie
Diana Rowland
Daw, Jul 5 2011, $7.99
ISBN: 9780756966752

In the Bayous of Louisiana, living in a dumpy old trailer with a drunk of a father, teenage dropout Angel Crawford knows she is a poster child for poor white trash. She is a pill and alcohol addict and a felon having bought and drove a stolen car even if she convinces herself the deal was legit. Angel wakes up one day in the hospital and learns she almost died from an overdose, but she has flashbacks that she was in a car with blood all over her. The delinquent assumes she hallucinated from drying out.

Her life careens further out of control when the nurse brings her clothes that she never owned and a cooler saying she could drink one bottle ever other day and if it goes on to say she has a job at the morgue as a van driver and a morgue tech. She takes the position because if she fails to do so the person who got her hired will inform her probation officer she has drugs in her system. At the morgue she has an overwhelming hunger to eat brains even as she works on dead people in the morgue. She smells of decay and realizes her body is rotting. She realizes she is a zombie and that a rogue zombie is indiscriminatingly killing people. Angel investigates though she could be permanently dead if she trusts the wrong person.

This is not the George Romero Z horror thriller as Diana Rowland has her zombies capable of performing cognitive thinking, abnormal strength and incredible speed; which enables the dead species to easily blend in with the general human populace. Alive, Angel was a lost soul; ironically as a dead head she has become a productive member of society who is removing the shakes of her past. This breezy read never takes itself seriously but the audience will enjoy this tongue in cheek zombie thriller.

Harriet Klausner

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