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oysterie 's review for:
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
by Anne de Marcken
[5 stars]
"But to be undead is to be superfluous, perpetual. The moon is always full. We dream without sleeping. We refuse to return to the earth. Hunger is relentless"
A slow, somber thing following a woman after she has turned into a zombie. She is currently living with a group of other zombies, she (and everyone around her) is haunted by the memories of people they loved in life who they now just can't quite remember, and her arm just fell off.
This is not a thriller or a horror novel or anything of that sort. This is a slow, introspective novella looking at a woman in the afterlife as she wanders the nearly-dead Earth and thinks about her life in respect to it. After the beginning, barring two short parts, there is very little dialogue between our MC and other characters. I think this works well for what the novella is. We are given time to live and walk and think and grieve with her. We viscerally feel her solitude and grief and hunger and melancholy in real time with her. It is an incredible and thought-provoking experience.
This is one of those books where my entire review could be quotes from the book. It is genuinely one of the most beautifully written novels that I have ever read. Most books that attempt this introspection subject end up trying too hard. "Purple prose" and all that. This book is nothing like that. Every line is necessary and inspired and beautiful. Every metaphor and her use of imagery is genuinely fresh and so evocative. It does not get lost in itself, either. It will be segments of the MC doing something, walking to a new place or thinking about an interaction that she just experienced, and then it is book-ended by her reminiscing and thoughts regarding that. It feels slightly formulaic at time, but it never falters or fails to impress. This is the first that I have read of de Marcken and I am so utterly impressed.
I struggle to voice how much this story affected me. The role of grief and longing is so visceral throughout that I felt everything alongside the MC. Every scene and revelation about her and her lover in their life was so real and it hurt. You experience the afterlife alongside the MC every step of the way.
"Things in rows and ranks are mournful. Trees planted to pulp. Soldiers or their gravestones. Multiplicity and order reveal sameness and variation. The limitations of our individuality. That we can be felled."
"I wanted to grieve while I still had to solace of you...The end of the world happens so quietly. Things as large as glaciers are so quiet."
"But to be undead is to be superfluous, perpetual. The moon is always full. We dream without sleeping. We refuse to return to the earth. Hunger is relentless"
A slow, somber thing following a woman after she has turned into a zombie. She is currently living with a group of other zombies, she (and everyone around her) is haunted by the memories of people they loved in life who they now just can't quite remember, and her arm just fell off.
This is not a thriller or a horror novel or anything of that sort. This is a slow, introspective novella looking at a woman in the afterlife as she wanders the nearly-dead Earth and thinks about her life in respect to it. After the beginning, barring two short parts, there is very little dialogue between our MC and other characters. I think this works well for what the novella is. We are given time to live and walk and think and grieve with her. We viscerally feel her solitude and grief and hunger and melancholy in real time with her. It is an incredible and thought-provoking experience.
This is one of those books where my entire review could be quotes from the book. It is genuinely one of the most beautifully written novels that I have ever read. Most books that attempt this introspection subject end up trying too hard. "Purple prose" and all that. This book is nothing like that. Every line is necessary and inspired and beautiful. Every metaphor and her use of imagery is genuinely fresh and so evocative. It does not get lost in itself, either. It will be segments of the MC doing something, walking to a new place or thinking about an interaction that she just experienced, and then it is book-ended by her reminiscing and thoughts regarding that. It feels slightly formulaic at time, but it never falters or fails to impress. This is the first that I have read of de Marcken and I am so utterly impressed.
I struggle to voice how much this story affected me. The role of grief and longing is so visceral throughout that I felt everything alongside the MC. Every scene and revelation about her and her lover in their life was so real and it hurt. You experience the afterlife alongside the MC every step of the way.
"Things in rows and ranks are mournful. Trees planted to pulp. Soldiers or their gravestones. Multiplicity and order reveal sameness and variation. The limitations of our individuality. That we can be felled."
"I wanted to grieve while I still had to solace of you...The end of the world happens so quietly. Things as large as glaciers are so quiet."