Zombie
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A zombie-obsessed teenager has his own way of navigating high school and family dysfunction in this “crazy, wicked, knockout of a book” (Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain).
High school may be hell. But for fourteen-year-old Jeremy Barker, hell doesn’t end when the bell rings. His pill-addicted mother, sex-addicted brother, and mostly-absentee Vietnam-vet father aren’t much of an improvement over the bullies at his all-boys Catholic school. He stays sane by watching movies. Zombie movies, to be exact, that provide a useful code of survival: avoid contact, keep quiet, forget the past, lock-and-load, and fight to survive.
His father’s also a fan, and watching zombie flicks together is their one way of father-son bonding. But even the wildest movie can’t prepare Jeremy for the day his English teacher slips his dad a DVD in the school parking lot—a home DVD of a macabre, ritual surgery. Jeremy’s father won’t say why he has the movie, or whether the gruesome spectacle is real. When his father disappears from the house yet again, Jeremy decides to investigate.
Twisted, fast-paced, and hilarious, this coming-of-age novel is a brand-new take on growing up in a world full of people who don’t understand you—whether those people are your ninth-grade classmates or a horde of slavering zombies.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jeremy Barker, a freshman at the Byron Hall Catholic High School for Boys in Baltimore, is obsessed with zombies, peppering references to his favorite zombie films throughout. Jeremy calls Byron Hall "prime zombie real estate" in part because of its ominous habitu s, like eight-fingered teacher Mr. Rembrandt and fellow students Dirtbag Boy, Super Shy Kid, and the Plaids. Though rather prickly as a narrator, Jeremy is treated by the world as merely hapless. He lives by a zombie code, which includes "#3. Forget the Past," a rule that grows in importance as Jeremy's recently divorced parents begin behaving strangely. His Vietnam vet dad stays out all night, mysteriously. His mom has a new boyfriend and a pill habit. And his older brother is a sex addict. Will Jeremy go for the college girl he spies on through her window, or find love with his dream girl from Byron Hall's sister school? Though Angelella's debut novel crackles with energy and attitude, the plot is less compelling or coherent than it could be, and his whining 14-year-old hero may rub some readers the wrong way.