"Or maybe, I say to the crow or myself, that the end, the end you can only see after it is too late, maybe the end is what makes a beginning what it is. What else is a beginning but the end of something else? The crow says nothing."
This was a breath of fresh air, an imaginative and evocative take on life after death in an oddly visceral and affecting short story about what it means to be alive.
It’s full of lyrical, poetic and deeply vivid prose that’s told like a train of thought, on tangents and observing the rich surroundings with curiosity as our narrator shares their thoughts with us in somehow rambling and coherent ways at the same time - there’s a lot of heavy text with no break but it felt like I was being pulled along with her with a quick, natural flow and the single-string storytelling style created a real sense of isolation but also intimacy with the narrator.
It was entirely dreamlike, feverish in the most delightful way and had that sense of something just being slightly wrong, an eeriness that was unshakeable as the most absurd and disturbing things happen but don’t feel absurd at the time. The strange purgatory we explore is unearthly, chilling but confusingly familiar, with striking scenes and a terrible kind of beauty — and we may never truly know if this really is a zombie uprising, a hell, or post-apocalypse, or a dream but despite the lack of solid answers when I reached that last page I felt some sense of connection, of warmth and happiness at my place in the world, knowing I may never fully understand it.
If you prefer your zombie stories to be all blood and guts with a clear linear narrative, this might not be for you. But if you’re looking for something new and exciting, you need to read this.
It’s full of lyrical, poetic and deeply vivid prose that’s told like a train of thought, on tangents and observing the rich surroundings with curiosity as our narrator shares their thoughts with us in somehow rambling and coherent ways at the same time - there’s a lot of heavy text with no break but it felt like I was being pulled along with her with a quick, natural flow and the single-string storytelling style created a real sense of isolation but also intimacy with the narrator.
It was entirely dreamlike, feverish in the most delightful way and had that sense of something just being slightly wrong, an eeriness that was unshakeable as the most absurd and disturbing things happen but don’t feel absurd at the time. The strange purgatory we explore is unearthly, chilling but confusingly familiar, with striking scenes and a terrible kind of beauty — and we may never truly know if this really is a zombie uprising, a hell, or post-apocalypse, or a dream but despite the lack of solid answers when I reached that last page I felt some sense of connection, of warmth and happiness at my place in the world, knowing I may never fully understand it.
If you prefer your zombie stories to be all blood and guts with a clear linear narrative, this might not be for you. But if you’re looking for something new and exciting, you need to read this.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over is available from March 7th with Fitzcarraldo. I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review.
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