(Disclaimer: I do not own Warm Bodies or any images pertaining to it on this post.)
R is in a rut. He spends every day in the same lifeless routine, in his suit and tie, with bags under his eyes and no conscious desire to change, because he doesn’t know he can. That is until he meets Julie, a lively, full-blooded girl, who causes something inside him to change. For the first time since he can remember he makes a choice. From this a romance he never thought possible slowly starts to exhume itself from the depths of its supposed impossibility. Their only concern—her family doesn’t approve of him and his family wants to eat hers…
In Isaac Marion’s break out novel Warm Bodies, he changes everything you
thought you knew about Zombies, and Romeo and Juliet.
R is a zombie who tells us his
gruesome, funny and moving story about his life as a zombie—from desiring
nothing but an occasional meal to meeting Julie on a hunting party where in
place of eating her he unexpectedly feels something inside him move. Instead of
following his zombie instincts he brings her home and protects her and bit by
bit starts to feel human again. In the process he effects change in other
zombies as well, while simultaneously and inadvertently starting a war with
zombies so far gone, their skin has rotted from their bones, and their
intentions so evil, even the other zombies fear them.
Warm Bodies has a touching yet
unexpected romance that very subtly follows the story of Romeo and Juliet, and
even has a balcony scene. It’s entertaining and makes you chuckle at the
absurd, but totally logical steps it takes to accomplish this aspect of the
story. We are so used to zombie stories being about mindless, cannibals that
hunt humans down and while that aspect is still very present, even with R, you
can’t help but hope that he will win Julie.
You are immediately drawn in by R’s
unintentional humor and desire to be better:
“‘Dead.' My eyes drift toward the sky and lose their focus. ‘Want it…to hurt. But doesn’t.’…I wonder if I’ve expressed anything at all with my halting, mumbled soliloquy […] I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I’m drowning in ellipses,’ (Pg. 51 Warm Bodies.)”
Marion has accomplished something in his first novel that no one has attempted in a zombie novel before—to make you feel for the zombie. He makes you want to cheer for him when he succeeds, and lament with him when he doesn’t. He takes R through the process of learning to live again and we get to go along for the ride, to feel not only for him, but with him. It’s more poignant for us, because of how fresh it all is for him. It’s intriguing, disgusting, amusing, startling, and lovely. Throughout the story the question burning at the back of your mind will be whether or not R will have a happily ever after, but that’s an answer you’ll only get by reading the book for yourself.
