Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen
Genre: Classic Retelling
Rating: 2.5 stars
“Your balls, Mr Darcy?” He reached out and closed her hand around them and offered, “They belong to you, Miss Bennet.”
When I first started reading Seth Grahame-Smith’s (and Jane Austen’s) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the name prepared me for a crazy ride. But frequent ball-related innuendos were not part of it, mostly because I could not imagine the prim and proper people of the Victorian era making such statements. And that isn’t half of what makes this book absolutely crazy!
The premise of this adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is pretty simple. Early 19th century England is plagued by an army of the gruesome undead, and the Bennet family, with their five daughters trained in the martial arts of the Orient, have pledged themselves to the throne to save everyone from them till they are dead, stricken or married.
The novel takes the original literary masterpiece and adds blood, action, zombies and scenes that border on pulp fiction. The sketches between the different chapters made the story even better. One thing that I really enjoyed about the way the story is written is the almost off-handed way in which the characters react to the constant threat of death. There are zombies out there grabbing random people on the roads, and while they do fight them, no one is panicking about it.
For all those who thought Elizabeth Bennet was a strong female lead, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes it one step further. She kills zombies with katana swords and muskets, she impales ninjas blindfolded, and she even kicks Darcy on the chin during the iconic first proposal. Can we talk about the modesty thread and the following headstand? The book takes every character from the original and goes berserk with it. Wickham gets the end he deserves, and Charlotte Lucas gets a story arc that is part hilarious and part disgusting in the best way ever. But somehow, Lydia is still just as annoying!
The book even takes the memorable first line of the book and turns it into an equally memorable one.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
A sentence below the synopsis of the book describes the authors of the book as follows:
“Jane Austen is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature. Seth Grahame-Smith once took a class in English literature.” The book is ridiculous but I can’t deny that I had fun revisiting one of my favourite classics through said ridiculous lens.