Boo-yah, baby!

Well, I gotta say, while I'm sure the rug will soon be yanked out from under me, I'm really enjoying the reviews for Husk thus far.

I've already listed a few (here), but there's a few more I'd like to draw your attention to:

First, the venerable American publication BookList (which many libraries and such consult for ideas on orders), gave me this sterling nugget of awesome:

Redekop follows up his 2007 debut, the very funky Shelf Monkey, with the story of Sheldon Funk, a struggling actor, who wakes up during his own autopsy. Undead but still functional, Funk looks for a way to keep himself out of the wrong people’s hands, land a plum acting job, and (eventually) weather the storm of zombie superstardom before decomposition inevitably gets the best of him. Featuring Funk’s ambitious agent and an unsavory doctor who finds gruesomely clever ways to keep Sheldon’s body from falling apart too quickly, the story is a lesson in practical zombieing: what to do when you become a member of the walking dead, how to pass yourself off as (relatively) normal, how to learn to speak and walk again, and how to deal with your new meatcentric dietary requirements. Very funny and full of nifty surprises, the story has a big heart, too, presenting Sheldon as an ordinary fella trying to come to terms with his extraordinary new situation. The ending is appropriate and packs a serious emotional wallop. Highly recommendable—perhaps to more than zombie geeks.

And now, on the eve of actual publication (October 1!), The Toronto Star, which had already labelled Husk as one of their Top 20 Fall Reads of 2012, weighs in with a full review that completely and utterly gets me:

There's a point near the end of Husk where the narrator, long dead and without much of a body left to drag around, decides to embrace his "pop culture heritage" and start acting more like a traditional zombie...That heritage isn't essential to enjoying Corey Redekop’s book, his second novel, but some background helps...Redekop tosses so much into this zombie stew that instead of wearing out his premise quickly it almost seems as though he needs a bigger pot. By the time we get to the end, which involves a reclusive billionaire's bid for immortality and an apocalypse that stirs together pages torn from Philip K. Dick and H. P. Lovecraft, one feels there's no more ground to cover. Zombiedom's entire pop culture heritage has been thrown against the wall in bleeding chunks, where much of it sticks.

Feeling pretty warm in the belly right now. Hmmmm. Warm.

Monkey droppings - The Blondes - Just a trim, please. Wait, put down that knife!

The monkey decides to lighten up his doldrums and make himself feel pretty.

And how shall he do this? With highlights. Lots and lots of highlights. And a perm!

Ever seen a monkey with a perm? Not good. Like one of those elderly C-list stars who've had way too much plastic surgery yet somehow feel they're presentable enough to parade down Rodeo Drive looking to buy purses that cost more than you make in a year.

You know the ones I mean.

I don't know...I don't think the highlights worked.

The Blondes (Random House, 2012)
Emily Schultz

Personally, I've always preferred brunettes, or redheads. Just a matter of personal preference. But if the events in Emily Schultz's The Blondes ever come true, I'm going to be very happy I didn't fall hard for a dame with golden locks.

Because Blondes is every fashionista's worst nightmare come true. A mysterious virus begins infecting women with blonde hair (even those who've gained blondedom through dyeing), turning them into violent mindless people who attack at random, and kill without a second thought. Kind of like a zombie novel with split ends. Ba-zing!

Schultz being Schultz, however — which means, being the author of Joyland and Heaven is Small, that she is a damned talented individual — there is far greater depth to The Blondes than the surface would indicate (see what I did there?). As much a satire of society's obsession with looks as it is a Outbreak-like contagion thriller, Schultz expertly entwines a speculative fiction premise with social commentary, making Blondes akin to Dawn of the Dreadfully Good Looking. Ka-pow!

I'll stop punning now.

Our hero, Hazel Hayes, is a young grad student working on a thesis on the media obsession and transformations of standards of female beauty. She is also new to New York, newly pregnant with the child of her (married) thesis advisor, and understandably freaked out a little. Her bad luck, then, to be at what appears to be ground zero of the new epidemic, soon dubbed "the blonde fury" by media wags. When a woman randomly attacks a young girl, Hazel tries to help, but find that her fellow citizens aren't the type to rush to anyone's aid:

Then cellphones came out into palms, and people punched into them, some reticently, some frantically. The punching continued for what seemed like forever, but no one lifted a device to an ear. Lack of reception. A couple of the high school kids didn't even bother trying to phone; instead, they held up their devices and calmly filmed.

Such inaction is a major plot device here, the idea that the 'other' (government, the CDC, etc) knows best, so we shouldn't get involved. Leave it to the professionals. Which the world does, and Hazel soon discovers herself in a world of rampant security, hysterical paranoia, and increased insanity (the idea that men will pay scads of money to have sex with infected blondes being one of the more memorable/disturbing).

Corollary to this epidemic scenario is Hazel's own crisis of begin pregnant, alone, and when the borders increase security, suddenly cut off from family. Being a redhead, she is close enough to blonde to be a cause for suspicion, and while I do not wish to give away spoilers, suffice to say that North America goes down a very dark path indeed, one that has all-too-obvious parallels to historical and present events.

Yet being as Hazel's work is in female body image, the bulk of the subtext is a concise examination of women as they are, as they are seen, and as they regard themselves. Hazel begins her tale with the phrase, "Women have stupid dreams," and from there Schultz unearths an entire world in thrall to appearance rather than substance. Baldness becomes chic, and wigs become de rigueur. Interestingly, while Hazel goes on about the myriad of ways women look to attack each other (not physically like the infected, more of a passive-aggressive taunt-her-into-an-eating-disorder sort of way), it's her friendships with women that allow her to make it through to the (hopefully) other side. In a world without hope, Schultz finds the key to survival, and it is others.

Blondes gives us not only a fine novel, but a fine author completely coming into her own. Schultz deserves all the accolades she gets.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

Some early reviews of HUSK

The book is still warm from the printers, and bookshelf appearances are weeks away. Nevertheless, Husk has already garnered a few remarkably positive reviews (I say remarkably because I have some issues with self-loathing which cloud my judgement on such things).

From Quill & Quire:

• “Despite all the violence and jokes about viscera, what gradually emerges is a tender portrait of a profoundly lonely man who finds love and acceptance only after his body has betrayed him . . . an enormously funny book that has real emotional heft underneath all the blood.”

Now that's a review, no? I slept very well after reading this, quite content with my place in the cosmos. Then, as the days crept by, my good vibes began to curdle in the lime juice of my low self-esteem. "Must have been a fluke," I thought.

Then, the Toronto Star saw fit to include my crazy ramblings as one of their Top 20 Reads of the Fall. Please check out the list, it's very likely the only time you'll ever see 'Corey Redekop' on the same honoured list as Alice Munro, Rawi Hage, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and Orhan Pamuk.

And then, there's these wonderful blurbs that'll appear on the final cover, accolades from some of my favourite authors who were way too kind in their praise.

• “A superb blood-splattered comedy. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll puke!” — Andrew Kaufman, author of All My Friends Are Superheroes and The Waterproof Bible
• “A wild vicious romp through pop culture, Husk rips the heart out of the rotting zombie genre and shoves it down your throat. Infection never hurt so good.” — Peter Darbyshire, author of The Warhol Gang and Please
• “Camus meets Palahniuk in a darkly comic, but surprisingly light-hearted, mind-meld in Corey Redekop’s Husk. Sure, the protagonist is a zombie, but this is 2012, and as Redekop rightly observes, we’re all zombies now.” — Andrew Pyper, author of The Killing Circle and The Guardians

I gotta say, I'm feelin' pretty fine right now. I'm sure it'll pass, so I'm going to do my best to enjoy the moment.

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