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Passing Strange (Generation Dead) by Daniel Waters (view source)
Revision as of 16:09, 11 June 2010
, 16:09, 11 June 2010no edit summary
Karen has always worn a disguise. When she was alive, her various camouflages hid the crippling depression that engulfed her so often and eventually led to her suicide. Now she's dead, make up, hair dye and blue contact lenses enable her to "pass" as a living girl. She talks fluently and her movements are fluid, unlike most of her differently biotic peers, whose pauses, stutters and jerky movements mark them out for all to see.
And now her friends are hidden under the ice of Oxoboxo lake - you can live underwater if you're a zombie, y'see, it's not as though you need to breathe - framed for a murder and in hiding from an increasingly hostile living society, Karen decides to make the most of her similarities to the beating hearts. She'll go undercover and she'll prove their innocence. Which means doing the unthinkable: dating Pete Martinsburg, the boy who shot Adam, and the one Karen suspects of framing her friends.
It's a dangerous game, and with the blue fog of depression threatening to engulf her again, Karen's going to need every last ounce of strength and purpose she has...
''Passing Strange'' is the third in the ''Generation Dead'' series. The press sheet positions it solidly in amongst the paranormal romance genre, as typified by what it calls the ''Twilight phenomenon''. Thankfully, it does emphasise that it has depth - which, let's face it, [[Twilight by Stephanie Stephenie Meyer|Twilight]] does not. I see the connection and understand the sales potential behind itthis, but I kinda think this it does the ''Generation Dead'' series a slight disservice. It ''does'' have depth and it's full of pauses for thought. Although the subject matter is entirely different, I'd be more inclined to ally it with [[The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd]], which cleverly melds a popular teen genre with serious comment in an absorbing but accessible way.
I missed Adam and Phoebe, our previous central characters, but I was rather glad Waters turned his attention to Karen, the quickest and least zombieish of his undead teenagers. She's an attractive character, so full of pep and vitality, that she provides all sorts of interesting juxtapositions to explore. The fascinating subtext underlying the main narrative is all about the ways in which Karen is gradually becoming somehow ''less'' dead. Why is this? And what makes a dead person anyway? Is it a beating heart? Or is it something entirely less corporeal? Emotional connections, perhaps? It's something very basic but absolutely crucial, isn't it? What makes us human?