Sonderbooks Book Review of

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

This book is awful. Truly terrible. But I have to admit that I find it frightfully hilarious.

Seth Grahame-Smith took the text of Pride and Prejudice and simply adjusted it to reflect an England in the grip of a dreadful plague of zombies. Everyone's prim and proper about it, but Elizabeth and her sisters are valiant zombie fighters who have trained in China in the "deadly arts."

This book should not go on lists titled "If you like Jane Austen..." It would be better for lists for those who don't like Jane Austen. I found myself laughing out loud and reading bits to my 15-year-old son, who is not interested in the original book, but found this all perfectly reasonable zombie mayhem.

In many places the story is much cruder, and definitely far more violent. I think they went too far when they had Elizabeth eat the beating heart of a ninja she'd conquered. I couldn't stomach more than a few chapters a night. But I'm afraid I found I couldn't stop. Knowing Pride and Prejudice as well as I do, I knew exactly what they had changed, and it was hilarious.

For example, at the party where we first meet Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, just as in the original book, Elizabeth overhears Darcy calling her "tolerable" and saying "I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men." But in this book, Elizabeth is insulted, and her warrior code demands that she avenge her honour. However, just as she is reaching for the dagger concealed at her ankle, a herd of "unmentionables" breaks the windows of the room and attacks the party.

Later on, when Elizabeth goes to visit Jane, taken ill at Netherfield, it is scandalous that she walk alone through the fields because the ground is soft from the recent rain, so all the more zombies are digging themselves out of graves. Elizabeth does encounter some, and dismembers them with skill. In this version, instead of simply commenting on the state of Elizabeth's hem, Bingley's sister notes,

And at Lady Catherine's, instead of being shocked that Elizabeth and her sisters did not have a governess, she is shocked that they didn't have their own ninjas.

Of course, probably the best part is when Elizabeth refuses Mr. Darcy's proposal and kicks him across the room with a force that shatters the mantelpiece. You don't mess with Elizabeth Bennett!

It's all very very silly and all carried off as if this is completely natural. Some things even make a little more sense. For example, Charlotte marries Mr. Collins because she was bitten by a zombie and stricken with the plague. She says,

Surely such a fate would make it worthwhile to marry even Mr. Collins.

I also find Wickham's eventual fate much more appropriate than the original.

One of the funnier parts of the book is the set of discussion questions at the back, still taking the book very seriously. Here is the final question:

My only fear is that memories of this book might intrude the next time I reread that great classic, Pride and Prejudice.