A post-apocalypse novel told from the point of view of one of the zombies, It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over begins with the heroine losing one of her arms and stuffing a zombie crow into her chest. Leaving behind the political and religious concerns of a small community of zombies, she sets off by herself, walking steadily westwards. An obsessive physical hunger — to eat the living — is complemented by the biting grief of loss, the scattered and inchoate memories of her life before and of a lost lover.

This fantastic framing is fleshed out with a stark realism. And a narrator half-detached from the world — as a zombie, but also by an externalised first person narration — allows It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over to stay finely balanced on the edge of both comedy and horror. It is a striking and memorable short novel.

July 2024

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