I cannot think of anything good to say about this
novel. We have three generations of
women here—sisters Paola, Bianca, and Candy, along with their mother Lucia, and
her mother Candelaria. However, this is
not only a family drama (I guess); it is also a zombie story. The action whips back and forth between
Christmas Eve and the preceding year. To
say that this novel is very hard to follow is an understatement, with floating
see-through televisions, characters eating other characters quite nonchalantly,
and conversations where it is unclear who is speaking. How exactly the zombies come into being is
still a mystery to me, but it has to do with a cultish workout center called
The Women’s Stone. Paola, who has renamed herself to Zoe after having disappeared
for a decade, lands a job as a spin class instructor there and soon comes to
suspect that something fishy is going on.
Candy, who did a stint in rehab after a drug overdose, becomes pregnant
by Bianca’s dead ex-boyfriend, goes to an abortion clinic where they drug her
and send her home, still pregnant, and is basically carrying some kind of
messiah for the undead. I couldn’t quite
determine if this novel was supposed to be farcical or a serious horror story,
but it was a nightmare to read, one way or the other.
My copy of this book was an advance reader’s edition, and
the numerous typos further tarnished my reading experience. Words and phrases were frequently left out or
duplicated, and letters were transposed to form other legitimate but
inappropriate words.
