(B) 73% | More than Satisfactory
Notes: An interesting speculation, but its main characters are boring, it force-feeds sentiment and it ends without resolution.300-399-pp author-nordic format-translated ...more342 s Kemper1,390 7,238

In this book, the corpses of the recently dead in Sweden become reanimated which leads to numerous legal, political and ethical issues when it comes to dealing with folks who arenÂ’t technically alive. What kind of dilemmas would this cause society? For example, if this actually happened in Stockholm, IÂ’m sure that that the publishers of Stieg LarssonÂ’s books would chain his zombified ass to a desk and let him bang on the keys of a laptop until they got enough to put out a new bestseller, The Girl Who sJFnfJGgJOJ=I30&*(&U389kkl8.

Back to this book. Sweden is experiencing a weird electrical surge that leaves people unable to turn off or unplug their electronics, and it also seems to be giving everyone some wicked headaches. After a sudden intensification of the electrical field, itÂ’s gone but in itÂ’s wake, the recently dead in the area have awakened.

However, these arenÂ’t the usual flesh eating zombies. These are just mindless and disgusting corpses that usually try to return to their old homes. The Swedish government tries to deal with 2000 of the walking dead as their loved ones demand answers and access to them. Is this a virus? Something supernatural? A sign of the apocalypse? No one knows, and the status of the zombiesÂ’ civil rights is up in the air since no law has ever addressed the undead before. As tensions rise, it becomes clear that the zombies are causing some kind of telepathy in the living people as well as becoming mirrors to the emotional state of those closest to them.

As both a fan of the zombie genre and LindquvistÂ’s previous genre-bending vampire novel Let the Right One In, I had high hopes for this one, but I was supremely disappointed. Part of my problem with this has to do with my own preferences in zombie story telling. I my zombies to be horrific cannibals who munch brains and destroy society while survivors struggle against them and each other. Whenever anyone starts to add in telepathy or tries to make the zombies part of some larger supernatural force, my eyes glaze over. And if youÂ’ve got a pack of zombies that are just sad remnants of the people who died that donÂ’t even try to gnaw on the nearest person, then IÂ’m just not that interested. (Yes, I realize I have issues.)

It seems Lindquvist couldnÂ’t decide if he was writing a horror novel about the nature of death, or kind of an absurd take on the idea of how society would react if people did come back from the dead. Frankly, S.G. BrowneÂ’s black comedy Breathers already dealt with a lot of these ideas, and Browne did it better. The focus keeps wandering as Lindqvist tries to add in some horror elements late in the game, and the ending was a mess.

ItÂ’s still well-written and Lindquvist is a writer who realizes that people are the ultimate monsters, but I would have d to have seen what kind of twist he could have put on the classic zombie genre of the undead destroying society rather than society trying to figure out how to deal with some mostly harmless walking corpses.horror scandinavian-mayhem zombies67 s Fabian973 1,902

Exceptional, morbid, & even quite beautiful. This one forms a trifecta with two other grand titans of modern horror lit I've read of late, "The Troop" by Nick Cutter and "The Girl Next Door" by Jack Ketchum. Alright, alright, I was also mightily impressed by the military-novel-slash-zombie-epic "World War Z"... so that's quite a few there! For a snobby reader who adored the horror genre, I sure am blessed.

The eeriness in this one raises hairs & activates them good ol' goosebumps. The relationships being tested as the natural boundaries of human existence is displaced for good makes the book unique and it is written in good taste, with fascinating stories that seem true--that the general existence of zombies is finally acknowledged in a book about the rising dead, that they exist in the same dimension, that they aren't a completely foreign concept by the residents handling the undead--this is uncommon and hardly ever done. This is gratifyingly ungratuitous... a true triumph of the genre. What the overpraised novels "Cell" by Stephen King & "The Strain" by Guillermo Del Toro tried but ultimately failed to do: Thrill.63 s Paul Bryant2,274 10.5k

Another Swedish gift to the world – after lutfisk, Ikea, Abba and the girl with the tattoo on her arse, now we get nice zombies. Well, these ones are not that nice, I guess. They don’t want to eat you, so that’s a plus, but they have limited conversation and really their concept of personal hygiene leaves something to be desired. But Paul Simon said they’re all right in a sort of limited way for an off-night. In fact I was behind these zombies all the way until the last quarter of the story when a cornered Christian Mr Lindqvist starts babbling mystical abstractions in an obvious attempt to cover up the blatant fact that he did not know how to end his story.
Up to then it was compelling. For a very specific period of time in a very specific place (Stockholm) dead people come back to life. But in a realistic way, not in a cosy way in those JehovahÂ’s Witnesses pamphlets




No – imagine your wife dies in a car crash and a week later she wakes up in the morgue – most of her face and right side is still missing and she really doesn’t seem to be quite herself. What do you tell your son? All she does now is flap around vaguely. She’s lost all her ambition. The situation is distressing. So we get three such scenarios and an attempted overview of how the authorities react to 2000 or so re-livers, as they’re called.

All of this is good, very compelling reading. I stories where the crazy stuff is treated seriously and realistically. Just it was in Let the Right One In, Mr LindqvistÂ’s famous brilliant vampire novel. But as I say in this one for the last 50 pages the (living) characters start to spout mystical non-sequiturs which finally aggravated me to death and I died and came back to life and I wasnÂ’t a nice zombie and I tracked Mr Lindqvist down and ate him. You may have read about it in the papers.

For me this was GoatÂ’s Head Soup after Sticky Fingers, Walking Dead season 6 after Walking Dead season 5, Joey after Friends, Roger Moore after Sean Connery, Sentimental Education after Madame BovaryÂ….

First 300 pages : 4 stars
Next 60 pages : 1.5 stars
Rounded up to 3 stars because I where this author is coming from even though I didnÂ’t where he went to in this one.novels scandilit spooky-ookums41 s Tracy (Vacay for a few days.)859 12

This is my first John Ajvide Lindqvist book and it will certainly not be the last. 'Handling the Undead' is no other zombie book I have ever encountered. With the cleverness and stealth of the most seasoned Ninja, Ajvide Lindqvist swoops in and grabs a hold of your psyche - and doesn't let go until the spine-tingling very last word.
Narrator Steven Pacey is phenomenal. He makes it easy to identify with the characters and their plights. It was as though I was observing them from the viewpoint of a fan in the stands of a game - Exceptional job.audible horror own-audible41 s RandomAnthony395 109

Ok, I'm giving up on page 146 of Handling the Undead and giving the book two stars. Sure, I only read about half the novel. I don't care. I feel I can make the call. Why, you ask?

I picked up this book off the “new fiction” library shelf when a woman was checking out about 14,000 DVDs and I didn't want to stand behind her and wait. Last year I read and loved Let the Right One In, for which this is author is best known, and I was hoping Handling the Undead was just as moving and innovative except with zombies rather than vampires.

The last sentence of the previous paragrah contains an unfair expectation. Zombies are, you know, zombies. They sort of go “uuuhhhhh” and walk around slow (Unless you're in that scary as shit zombie movie, the one with Sarah Polley, which I can only watch five minutes at a time when I channel surf basic cable. Those zombies were fast.) but have no emotional weight. They can't talk. Well, in this case, at least one of them kind of talks, but...well, barely.

I could be wrong, but I get the feeling I knew where Lindqvist was headed with the storyline and wasn't that interested in the terrain. So these zombies don't kill anyone (uh, at least in the first 146 pages) and the zombies' loved ones aren't sure how to handle the newly undead. Should they sledgehammer the bodies until they're dead for sure? Lock them up and hope for a cure? Renovate the spare bedroom for zombie needs? Are the zombies even their loved ones, or just their loved ones corporeal forms reacting to freak stimuli? Linqvist, I think, is trying to explore the limits and desperation of love. Ok. I get that. And he adds fascinating new elements (e.g. the initial event when all appliances turn on and are impossible to shut down) to the genre. He also seems to relish twisting the reader's intestines by placing characters in realistic and heartbreaking situations. His characters sound authentic. But...Let the Right One In transcended horror novel conventions and Handling the Dead did not. And I wanted more. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe I'm everyone who bought Around the World in a Day hoping the album sounded the Purple Rain soundtrack. I'm ok with that. Do I think exploring the limits and desperation of love in relation to encountering, for example, one's wife as a zombie, is interesting? Yes. 146 pages worth of interesting, in this case, but not more. I wanted this novel to end by page 100. And that's no way to read. Two stars, for the first half, a pass on the second.
33 s Christina Stind502 62

A butterfly beats its wings somewhere in the universe - and an electrical field lowers itself over Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, and causes a piercing headache in everyone as well as making it impossible to turn of any electrical appliances or machines. When the field lifts, something has changed - the recently deceased have come back to life... - and they want to come home.

That's the premise in John Ajvide Lindqvist's book. This wouldn't normally be a book I would read - much less buy - but after reading a review in Weekendavisen, I felt I had to read it. And it is definitely not your typical zombie story!

The book follows three families. David and his son Magnus who looses the mother of the family, Eva - who dies a few hours before the dead wake up again and therefore is very interesting to authorities, especially because she speaks. Flora and her grandmother - grandfather actually returns from the morgue. And finally - and to me and the reviewer in Weekendavisen most interesting - 6 years old Elias and his mother Anna and grandfather. Elias died a month earlier and grandfather therefore had to dig him out. This scene, with grandfather digging and Elias scratching on the lid of the coffin as well as the sound of him shaking the box of Legos he was burried with, was so strong and emotional - and the reason I had to read this book. This storyline with Elias' mother and grandfather trying to bring him back to life by giving him water with salt and sugar, using cremes to help make his skin less dry is so touching, especially if you have children of your own that you would do everything for - even after they've been dead for a month and certainly look the part and have nothing left of that cuddly chubbyness they had when you last saw them...

A fourth component is the medias and authorities. Throughout the book, we are given interviews with doctors, politicians and military personel as well as parts of articles and tv-programmes (including from CNN and other medias outside Sweden) which help tell the not personal and private stories of these undeads - and put a light on the difference between what the relatives and the authorities want to see happen with these 'people'.

This is a book about metaphysics (is it the soul that brought these people back - and what is a soul then? What is death? Is death no longer the end?), religion (Is this the End of Days? Is the world going under and Jesus returning?), ethics (is it okay to do just anything to the undeads since they have no rights (Citizenship ends with death)?) but mostly, it's a book about love - love for your family, and especially the love between parents and children.

But it's also a book about hate and fear. See, the undeads have the ability to receive what you're thinking and their reactions are conditioned of what you feel. So if you feel hate towards them or think they are ugly, they react - in strong ways, as little Magnus discovers when he brings his new pet rabbit to visit his undead mother...

So even though this is a very light and easy read, Lindqvist manages to put a lot of food for thought into it - and even though this is not my normal genre, I really enjoyed it and I think that I will read more of this author's works.2009 fiction31 s Mia Nauca124 3,849

3.5 estrellas
Las 3 primeras partes de este libro son increíbles, me encantaron. Es una novela de zombies pero realista ¿qué pasaría si la persona que diste por muerta, por la que lloraste y extrañas con todo tu ser regresa a la vida? Pero no es como la recordabas, es un cadáver que se mueve y no mucho más que eso.

Aquí los zombies no te quieren comer, no te intentan convertir. Simplemente, quieren regresar a casa.

Como dije los primeros 3/4 son hermosos. El último se me hizo aburrido y medio jalado de los pelos.

No se compara con Let The right one in, pero si te gustan los zombies y quieres leer algo distinto, sí lo recomiendo30 s LIsa Noell "Rocking the Chutzpah! 646 376

I love these books
All the time, everywhere.31 s Tatiana1,445 11.5k

2.5 stars

As a huge fan of Let the Right One In, I can confidently tell you Handling the Undead is not nearly as good as John Ajvide Lindqvist's debut novel. This book is lifeless and barely kicking, just the zombies it is about.

Now, of course I have to give the author credit for the fresh premise. Lindqvist's zombies are not violent and are not monsters. The story is not about them going after people to chomp on their flesh. Rather, the author raises questions: if the undead are not aggressive, how will people react to them, handle them? will the relatives welcome the return of their dead beloved or be disgusted by them? how should the undead population be treated by authorities, as corpses or as human beings? what place do they have in a society? This is definitely not something often explored in zombie literature.

In spite of the interesting premise, the book is just so dull and slow! There is maybe a couple of scenes of genuine horror and gore, the rest is all unrelatable, unremarkable, cardboard people going about their dull business, thinking dull thoughts. And then it's written in a very juvenile style. IDK if the translator didn't do her job properly. The best parts of the story are snippets of TV interviews, medical research, and newspaper articles.

Basically, the novel lacks psychological depth, complexity, emotional impact and excitement of Let the Right One In. It is a half-baked effort, a story that never reaches its full potential. Give it a miss if you are a fan of the author's first book.2010 mysteries-thrillers-horror28 s Maria Clara1,070 592

Segundo libro del reto La casa encantada.

Exactamente no sé qué esperaba de este libro, pero no ha conseguido engancharme.22 s Amalia (?•?•?)?313 68

2.5?
Una novela entretenida pero en la que me han quedado muchas dudas acerca del despertar de los muertos. Además, no aparecen mucho, sin embargo cuando lo hacen, las escenas son escalofriantes.
.
An entertaining novel but in which I have many doubts about the awakening of the dead. Also, they don't appear much, however when they do, the scenes are chilling.18 s Antonio TL268 33

En una noche inusualmente cálida en Estocolmo, Suecia, sucede algo muy extraño. Toda la gente en la ciudad experimenta un terrible dolor de cabeza. Los aparatos eléctricos se niegan a apagarse, incluso cuando están desenchufados. Y los muertos recientes empiezan a levantarse...

Suena todo como un montaje estándar para una historia de zombis, no? pero lo que John Ajvide Lindqvist nos ofrece es algo muy diferente: una deconstrucción del género zombi, o una subversión de él, o tal vez solo una visión muy diferente. Porque estos zombis no se levantan e inmediatamente comienzan a tener hambre de carne humana. Son simplemente tus seres queridos, muertos y podridos, no son lo que eran, pero tampoco se han ido del todo. Y, en última instancia, es una novela que está más preocupada por las personas que alguna vez pertenecieron a esos cadáveres arrastrados que por los cuerpos mismos.

En parte es un libro extraño. Si te adentras en él buscando una trama, o incluso un gran drama, es posible que te decepciones. Lo mismo ocurre si esperas explicaciones simples, lógicas y científicas para todo. Y la escritura puede parecer un poco incómoda, de una manera difícil de precisar que me inclino a culpar a la traducción. Pero hay muchas sutilezas fascinantes en él, cosas que invitan a contemplar los misterios de la vida y la muerte y a echar una nueva mirada a un genero de terror que se ha vuelto tan familiar que ya no nos molestamos en considerar demasiado su argumento.

Además, hay una cantidad sorprendente de momentos en los que me encontré pensando: "Guau, los zombis que no comen personas son mil veces más espeluznantes que los que sí lo hacen. ¿Quién lo hubiera pensado?".terror17 s Becky1,443 1,798

I really enjoyed Lindqvist's "Let The Right One In". I d the feel of it - the tone and darkness and sadness. I d the immediate connection with the characters, that, while a little awkward at first, smoothed out and became effortless not long into the story. I d the multi-level creepiness, and then the flat out horror. It was good. There were some issues with the writing, which could come down to translation, but were distracting nonetheless.

Everything that I d about that book is missing in this one, and everything I disd is amplified. And on top of that, "Handling the Undead" is just boring.

I gave up reading this around the 27% mark. I said that I was going to give this another 50 pages, but I just couldn't. Every single time I picked it up and saw whole conversations consisting of vague non-dialogue ("Did you...?" "Yes." "Oh, good... I thought..." "No.") I just wished for a real zombie to come eat my brain and put me out of my misery. The most frightening thing that happened in the 27% of the book I read was that it made me read spoilers. Intentionally. Yup. I fucking read SPOILERS in the hopes that they would indicate some sort of book redemption. Instead, I learned that this book is just one long, poorly written, painfully boring musing on the nature of life and death, the soul, existence. FML.

If I want to read a philosophy book, I'll do that. I pick up zombie books because I want to read about vicious, relentlessly hungry monsters. If not those kinds, then SOME kind of zombie that does something other than shuffle paperwork. Hey, Lindqvist? We already have those... they work in government.

disappointing dnf fantasy ...more14 s Joe513 973

Anticipating that the author of Let the Right One In and Little Star would grab me by the throat again, this time with a zombie uprising in Sweden, I was very disappointed to receive only a gentle bump. Two stars are for John Ajvide Lindqvist's somber and ambitious attempt to try something radically different in a sub-genre where so many authors simply follow the market. It's an admirable try.

Freakish atmospheric phenomenon hits Stockholm during the summer and the lives of several characters are effected when the corpses of nearly 2,000 recently deceased Swedes rise from the grave. Standup comedian David loses his wife Eva in a car accident only to watch her reanimate in Danderyd Hospital. Their 9-year-old son Magnus must cope.

A reporter named Mahler is dispatched to the hospital to find the staff struggling to detain the bodies who have hopped up in the morgue and are struggling to leave. Mahler has a 6-year-old grandson who recently died and digs the boy out of his grave to bring it home to his despondent daughter Anna. What's left of the boy is more mummy than child, but rather than turn it over to the authorities, Mahler and Anna hide it.

Elvy and her granddaughter Flora are gifted with second sight and are visited by Elvy's dead husband, who cannot speak, but tries to go about living as if nothing had changed. Whereas Flora is a fan of Marilyn Manson and horror movies, her Christian grandmother sees this as a sign of the Resurrection. They both detect a presence around the undead and though the corpses remain non-violent, soon to be rounded up and interned at the hospital, the women sense something else is going on.

Handling the Undead was a Kindle purchase and by the time I'd read 70%, I started flipping through the pages to finish. The novel is inferior to Lindqvist's spellbinding debut in every way -- one-dimensional characters, flaccid atmosphere, sparse social commentary, lack of horror -- and nowhere near as chilling or unpredictable as his most recent.

Buyer beware, this is not a doomsday take on the zombie sub-genre or one in which the dead lurch around muttering "Brains!" With total seriousness, Lindqvist attempts to examine how Stockholm would react if the dead returned, from media coverage to legal issues to the behavior of Christian wingnuts. The problem is that very little seems at stake.

Afterlife stories are often hamstrung with grieving characters, who I find not very interesting because they remain stuck in one gear. They're beside themselves over the death of a loved one until they learn contact might be made, but mostly, they weep, and mope, and ache, and they do this for family members the reader has no investment in and doesn't care a fig about. Handling the Undead never overcomes this drag.

Lindqvist does conjure two ghoulish scenes involving the reanimated. One involves a grisly accident victim staring at her husband with her one remaining eye, and the second involving a drowning victim with little remaining in the way of human features trying to break into a cabin on an island.

*** Spoilers! ***

The author reveals that the undead are surrounded by an energy field which not only enables the living to read each others thoughts, but to influence the dead with their own thoughts. This is sort of the "mood slime" in Ghostbusters II. This psychic concept was something new and had potential, but by then, I was bored by the characters and not interested in finding out what it meant for them.This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full reviewparanormal-zombies13 s Paula525 18

‘Let the right one in’ also by John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of my favourite reads of this year, a remarkable story, not just a vampire story but so much more. ‘Handling the Undead’ is just as good, another amazing story from John Ajvide Lindqvist.

‘Handling the Undead’ begins in Stockholm on a night when the weather is heavy and everyone can feel that something is about to happen and it does, in the worse way imaginable, people who have been dead for two months are returning from the dead, the government are not sure what to do, the families of the ‘reliving’ (as they are eventually called) are at a loss of what to do or how to feel about it?

‘Handling the Undead’ is a book that makes you think, what would you do? So much happens once the ‘reliving’ return, the government find themselves making the wrong decisions, how do you handle people who are technically alive but not alive, do they have rights? Do they have a place in the world? Can they return to their families?

‘Handling the Undead’ is more than a story about life after death, what do you do when you lose someone and they come back from the dead? All the characters in the story are conflicted, they have lost someone in some way and now they have returned but the ‘reliving’ are different, they are not the people they once were, they are a shell of what they were but at the same time there is a faint glimmer of the person they were.

All of the relationships are strong relationships, you can feel the strength as you read, and you feel their pain and their loss, their confusion, coming to terms with a loss and then their happiness when their loved ones return.

I found ‘Handling the Undead’ to be a powerful read, so many questions are raised and so many social problems are brought forward, you will get very engrossed in this story, there is so much to this book that you will find enjoyable, enlightening, scary and most of all make you look at the world around you.

A must read.13 s DeAnna KnipplingAuthor 160 books270

A strange, hard-to-describe book.

It started slowly; it has multiple POVs (which I normally am less than enthusiastic about); it's not about zombies (vs. the undead) until the very end of the book; I wasn't quite sure what the book was about, although it was definitely about something; it should have felt a pretentious literary interpretation of a pop subject but didn't.

Suddenly, for no reason, there's a heat wave in Sweden, electrical appliances don't work the way they should, and the newly dead start coming back. Is the reason religious or scientific? This is carefully balanced and left in mystery (although both religion and science [and goths] are skewered, not outright, but in retrospect. "Ahhhh...that's what that meant" kind of thing).

The living, when around the dead, start becoming telepathic. The dead, when around the living, start absorbing their emotions, which are mostly negative. Bad things happen due to both.This

This wasn't a book about zombies, it was a book about death. I know, zombies are supposed to be about death, but they really aren't. They're about death-as-a-threat-you-can-fight-but-ultimately-overwhelms-you. This is a book about how-we-feel-about-our-dead. Our loved ones, are they threats, now that they're dead? Do we ever resolve what we feel about them? Do they stop being people in our hearts, even though they're not themselves? Does death terrify us because it is scary, or because we are scared of it?

I d it. I don't know that I ever want to read it again, but I d it.11 s Vickie219 1 follower

A very different take on the zombie sub-genre (but not an apocalypse,fyi), so props to Lindqvist for being creative. It was good, but it just didn't wow me. I'm used to my zombie stories being full of action, so I guess I'm spoiled by that.zombie-apocalypse11 s Annie?242 69

Reto de la Mansión Encantada. Segundo libro.

Se me hizo una lectura lenta y poco memorable. No logré adentrarme en la historia. Y lo intenté, juro que lo intenté.

Bien, en este caso no terminó de convencerme la historia, puede que sea interesante la forma en que trata el tema de la Muerte y todo eso, pero hubo algo que no acabó de convencerme. Pienso que los personajes de Flora y Elvy podrían haberse aprovechado y no fue así. Me interesaba bastante cuando leía sobre Eva y Elias.

Y el final creo que fue un poco precipitado, no se explica qué pasó con los redivivos, solamente se explica lo que pasó con Eva y Elias. Al igual que con El ciclo del hombre lobo, me dejó con esa pregunta sin responder; ¿POR QUÉ?

¿Qué sucedió para que solamente esas almas regresaran de la muerte?
¿Por qué antes no habían regresado?

Solamente puedo decir que, para mí, el final estuvo flojo.
Son detalles que se le escaparon al autor. Y una "reseña" que yo no había podido hacer :)
2017 mansión-encantada11 s Ragnheiður41 3

The Swedish nation really is exceptionally open minded when it comes to the dead rising.

"THE DEAD ARE RISING!"
"ok"


This book sucks.
I have the same basic problem with it as I did Let the Right one In -Lindqvist simply isn't that good as a writer, or they are badly translated. Most ly both. The text doesn't flow as naturally as it could and the storyline is avarage (stupid more ). Maybe my standard of Horror is too high after all the King books I've read (or after the class on Horror I took last semester) but Lindqvist just isn't worth it, I'd rather read something else by someone else in the future. i-own read-in-201110 s Joanna Smith51 39

Zombies and telepathy is not usually my preferred reading but my self-imposed horror month has allowed my to expand my literature experience. I think that I actually prefer Lindqvist’s writing in this genre to king’s to be honest. It is slightly bleaker and more edgy. ‘Handling the Undead’ is a tale of grief and healing, told through the heartbreaking loss of loved ones and the bonds of family. Four stars! ????????horror paranormal supernatural9 s Gafas y Ojeras257 259

En el ya conocido subgénero de la literatura zombi, aunque en esta historia es necesario cambiar el término por el de muerto viviente, la innovación y la búsqueda de una idea diferente no es muy habitual. De ahí que esta novela sea tan necesaria y demoledora en muchos aspectos. Capaz de estremecer y aterrar como pocas, no es un libro en el que se respeten los cánones habituales del género que creó Romero hace ya unos 50 años.
Aquí los seres fallecidos regresan. Y regresan como los seres en que se han convertido tras su muerte. No como criaturas hambrientas de carne, deseosas de encontrarte en masa para que te unas a su horda. Vuelven confundidos y tristes. Desesperanzados, impersonales y con la mínima y angustiosa conciencia de que no deberían haber regresado.
Pero esta historia no va sobre ellos. Plantéatelo por un momento. ¿Qué estarías dispuesto a hacer por volver a tener cerca a tus seres más queridos? ¿Serías capaz de amarlos aún cuando sus cuerpos se están descomponiendo? ¿Te haría ilusión que regresara a tu lado la persona que más te ha hecho sufrir?
El terror que abunda en este libro va más allá de la presencia de estos seres queridos en descomposición. Y no es poco, que hay momentos tan estremecedores que será imposible que no se te erice la piel. Momentos repulsivos, incómodos y provocadores. Pero este libro va de otra cosa. Va de mirarte en el espejo y aceptar nuestro egoísmo. De nuestra crueldad innata cuando nos sacan de nuestra zona de confort. De remordimientos y, sobre todo, de descansar de una maldita vez en paz.9 s Christine6,824 519

Preface to review - I'm not a zombie fan. I'm specist that way.

This isn't the Walking Dead. Thank god. If you d "The Monkey's Paw", you should give this book a try, for it harkens more to that anything else.

In the city of Stockholm (beautiful city btw) and only in the city of Stockholm, some dead people have come back to life, maybe. Kinda. It could be the second coming who knows.

This book because it is a microchasm. Lindqvist keeps the focus on a select few, each of whom has a lost a family who is now part of the "reliving" (the risen dead). The book is more of look at how people would response to that, and that makes the book very interesting.

I must say the reason why I gave the book four stars comes down to a few paragraphs on page 182. It those few paragraphs Lindqvist examines the following in an extremely accurate and powerful manner.

1. the attachment of a reader to a book
2. the fact that some books have a wider influence than their authors believe.
3. The connection between the reader and the author

It made me want to cry it was so brillantly written.literature-sweden9 s PaulAuthor 115 books9,550

If not for the new-agey ending/explanation for the undead, this would've been a 5 star rating for me. Minor quibble, really, though. There are scenes in this novel that are breathtaking and as emotionally authentic as it gets. Lindqvist skirts the line of sentementality beautifully (until the dopey ending, that is). 9 s F.R.Author 32 books207

The first two-thirds of ‘Handling the Undead’ are brilliant. Rather than go the traditional Romero route with his zombie story, Lindqvist tries to present the tale almost within real life parameters.

After a heat-wave and a surge of electricity, the recently deceased of Sweden start to rise. There is chaos, particularly at the hospitals, and the apparatus of state is forced to move in quickly (and clumsily) to sort out the mess. But these zombies are not flesh-eating, brain-craving monsters. They do not walk with their arms out-stretched in graveyards or dance to Michael Jackson songs. Instead they are rotting bodies suddenly – and seemingly harmlessly – returned to life, and those who can communicate have no more idea why than anybody else.

Clearly dead people walking around is a disturbing phenomena and the experts work hard to understand it. The wider public is initially fascinated, but then goes back to normal life with picnics and comedy clubs and so on. And these details of scientific analysis, coupled with the real world managing to survive (as well as various inserts showing Prime Ministerial press conferences, official reaction and television news reports), all add an air of authenticity to what is obviously a fantastical scenario.

At the emotional centre of the book are three families who have each been recently bereaved, and now are having to cope with the unexpected return of their loved ones. These tales don’t overlap as much as I would have d, and it can seem reading three separate short stories that have been knit together – but Lindqvist does have a good feel for his characters, and it’s hard not to empathise with their plight and their responses.

Where the novel fails though is in its final third. Having created this wonderful set-up in a real-life world, then built up superb characters in an incredible situation, it seems as if Lindqvist has no idea what to do next. This is a definitely a book which finishes with a whimper rather than a bang, limping its way to a close when one expected so much more of it.7 s Chris8

Fantastic study on how people deal with death and dying. Not a typical zombie apocalypse story. A strange electrical current occurs and about 2000 of the recently departed are returning home. According to a character Flora when asked by her brother about what the dead are , she replies "They're nice." In the end, it's not that simple.

Difficult to read, weighty themes and topics. Not a light hearted read at all.

Ultimately a human story about loss and how to deal with it. Certainly not an action story, some would say that it's not a horror story, but I would disagree. It's not a blood squirting, face eating kind of story. The horror comes from less expected sources, more subtle, less obvious.

And that's what makes this a great book. It's not what you'll expect, and that's a good thing. Typical zombie stories are typical. Zombies are everywhere, people band together, don't always agree, some get eaten, tension... This story is more about how people react, cope and eventually become comfortable with a soul crushingly horrific situation.

Highly recommend.7 s Colleen753 52

I had very very high hopes for this book.

And I kept on reading to the bitter end, hoping my hopes would be realized.

Still not sure what the hell I was reading.

It's if Virginia Woolf set out to write a zombie book, except I think Virginia Woolf could have done amazing things with that. Let's say a subpar zombie Virginia Woolf was dug up and resurrected and tasked to write this book in exchange for brains. Maybe then.

So basically this isn't horror at all. Spooky cover, Stephen King reference on the cover, are all very misleading.

So fine, it's not horror, it's some existentialist elegy to death and loss, okay. I just didn't think that was very good either. I didn't even dis the characters, because that would be evoking strong emotions and I found this book incredibly BLAH.

I found the ending terrible too. And obviously it was planned from the beginning since the opening scene--but I got to that last chapter and could barely read I was rolling my eyes so hard. zombies7 s Jason401 57

I think I expected a hauntingly sizzling, howling, groaning, shrieking read, but the only real onomatopoeia came from me, the moaning reader - sending this book zooming through the air, raspy pages a-fluttering right up until it thunked dully into the fireplace, anticlimactic crackling of burning pages followed by an eventual dissatisfying smoky, puffing sizzling out - the grunting reader clopping and shuffling it's creaky bones away.
(No actual books were harmed in the making of this review.)

I am okay with, and in this case even expected, a different take on a classic horror theme, but... this just did not do it for me. I felt there was so much promise in the premise, so many possible directions to go in, and a building-up which never crescendo-ed, but merely dropped away in surprisingly undramatic fashion. So, yeah the story didn't really work, but I am pretty sure it could have if the correct structure and style had been adopted, it was a mismatch. To me the story could have largely followed the same themes of dealing with death and loss, but in that case needed more emotionally driven writing, something less journalistic and distant - it did not hit the right cords. I didn't end up caring for the characters, I felt for their general pain, but that was because of an empathy I have for such loss, not because I was convinced that the characters actually felt it. The book was a little too flat and/or discordant, relying on the reader to inject the emotion themselves. There were scenes that felt genuinely creepy, but then they took away from the other themes that were developed and the creepy factor was not committed to either leaving the reader in an awkward middle ground, believing none of it. Meh, I don't know, maybe I am just a humbug. Ho hum, not a terrible book, there are some elements to be appreciated, but for this reader at this time, just so much middling mewling blah. 6 s Daniel RussellAuthor 52 books149

LetÂ’s see if the beginning of this review can sound just every otherÂ…

John Ajvide Lindqvist is the shooting star of the Swedish horror literature scene, after his vampire novel, Let the Right One In, caught attention after a rather touching, intelligent and brutal film adaption. This turned many readers to the book, this reviewer included, and it was my selected read of 2010. In an industry saturated with mundane vampire novels, Lindqvist did wonders, creating a bleak and depressing book that transcended comparisons in the genre and created a book I would certainly see as a classic. Could this success be repeated with Handling the Undead?
Can he do the same breathtaking job with one tired genre as he did with vampires?

Handling the Undead concentrates on an area of Sweden stuck in a heatwave. One day, as the heat is at its highest and people are really suffering from its effects, electrical appliances wonÂ’t turn off, and the residents are blasted by a sudden headache. ThenÂ…all is quiet.

But is it? The recently dead are coming back to life. Not quite the shambling, hungry armies of the undead in popular film and literature these ‘reliving’ are rotten shadows of their former selves: slow, confused and a burden to those around them.

We follow three families in their struggle to deal with the recent changes: a journalist whose 8 year old son died a month ago, a goth girl and her grandmother, both psychic, and a stand up comedian whose wife was killed and reborn in the same night.

And thatÂ’s my problem with this book. You see, nothing else really happens.
When I read a story, I Â…a story. Undead had a brilliant opener that kept the pages turning, but once the dead were back to life and the situation had settled down, this became more a documentary following what these people do about it.
The psychic girl and grandmother are particularly annoying. Their psychic powers have very little impact and use in the book, and when the dead grandfather arrives, they hardly seem to care at all. In fact, he never reappears and is barely even thought about. The two women just seem to go around complaining about everything.
Yes, this book is 360ish pages of characters moping around, complaining and crying on each other. Yes, this might be a more realistic slant, but it makes for a very dull novel. There is no purpose, no mission, no drive through the pages. Every character seems very unsure of what to make of the event and what to do next. The idea of souls is interesting, but comes in for the last 20 or so pages from the book. This is not enough to save the bookÂ’s atrocious ending.

In fact, IÂ’m going to cut this review short. I started this a week ago, but the novel itself, I had no real passion to finish it, other than a sense of obligation.

The two stars IÂ’m awarding this novel is solely for the opening (even though the heat, headaches and electrical appliance thing do nothing for the story and could have easily been cut) and for a single heartbreaking chapter in the book. If this chapter was a short story, it would be incredible. Shame about the fluff that surrounds it.

I can recommend this if youÂ’re a zombie enthusiast looking for something different in a very trite genre. I would also recommend this to people who dull books. Cover looks nice though.
reads-since-the-big-move6 s [Name Redacted]824 479

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