Review | Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Recent announcements about upcoming releases for Emma and the Vampires and Wuthering Bites prompted from me a Twitter rant on this new trend in speculative fiction. Shouldn’t writers create their own characters, worlds, and stories instead of tampering with tried-and-true classics? But then I realized I was engaging in contempt prior to investigation. So, in an attempt to either give my contempt a solid basis in experience or overturn it altogether, I picked up the audio version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. While in theory my criticisms levelled against the “supernatural classics” genre still stands, in practice I enjoyed the hell out of this book.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
By Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith; Read by Katherine Kellgren
Audible Download – 10 hours 23 mins [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible
Published: 2009
Print: Paperback, 320 pages

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies The opening sentence exemplifies the structure of the novel as a whole. At its core, this is still the Pride and Prejudice we’ve all read in high school or college, but with the addition of “ultraviolent zombie mayhem.” Wherever possible, Jane Austen’s original writing is preserved, and Seth Grahame-Smith does his best to match her proto-Victorian style in the added scenes. The novel’s zombies, for example, which have bedevilled England for over two decades, are called “unmentionables” in polite conversation, which lends an air of truth and credibility to the book’s absurd concept.

The Bennet sisters are still in search of husbands, but they also happen to be zombie killers, trained in the Shaolin tradition of combat. The conflict between town and country in the original masterpiece is paralleled here by a conflict between fighting styles, the Chinese tradition practiced by the Bennets and the Japanese ninja training espoused by Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The genteel courtesy of Georgian England is infused with an Oriental sense of warrior honor. London is a city under siege, districted into quarantined neighborhoods. In addition to the fear that Jane Bennet has taken ill after her visit to Mr. Bingley in Netherfield Hall, her sister Elizabeth worries she has also come down with “the strange plague” that begins the zombification process.

Yes, it’s absurd, but on the whole Seth Grahame-Smith has succeeded in building an alternate history that, though utterly implausible, is at least mostly internally-consistent. The seams between the original material and the reworked or added passages certainly show through at times. Despite their adherance to the Shaolin kung fu tradition, for instance, the Bennets still train in a dojo, and Elizabeth Bennet wields a katana. But as long as the reader doesn’t probe too closely, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an intentional mélange, rather than the unintentional mess it easily could have been.

Katherine Kellgren narrates the Audible version with perfect attention to the voices of the Pride and Prejudice characters we know and love. Lydia Bennet’s incessant babble is suitably annoying, Mrs. Bennet’s voice flutters nervously, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s condescension creeps through in every word. Amazingly, Kellgren’s voice is also capable of dropping a couple octaves for the occasional guttural zombie groan.

For those who have never had the pleasure of reading Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a great introduction to her poetic language, since, as I said, much of her original writing is preserved. Even the overall themes and character development remain intact. Purists will balk, of course, as purists always do, but most readers who want to revisit a beloved author from a wild new perspective will not be disappointed.