Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Customer Reviews

• P&P Fan, LOVE This  Mar 27, 2009 (471 of 505 found this helpful)

  The literary community should never be too proud to laugh at itself. I own three copies of the original "Pride & Prejudice" plus all the movies, so my husband and I bought this the moment we spotted it on the shelf (and laughed all the way to the register).
  
  Fans need to read this book tongue-in-cheek and prepare to laugh WITH it. If you don't like zombies or consider yourself a Jane Austen purist, if you admire only the most intricate writing and consider this sort of work irreverent, then you'll be appalled more than amused. The level of writing IS degenerated from the original but, considering the subject matter, I don't think "quality" was the forethought of the day. "Brains" is more like it.
  
  On a literary note, the juxtaposition of familiar classic and farcical horror makes for harmless, laugh-out-loud comedy. I applaud this idea and hope the "Quirk Classics" line hammers out more spoofs on stories I love.
  
  The only thing I find annoying is the last line of the blurb: "transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read." I'm perfectly capable of enjoying BOTH, thankyouverymuch.

• Clever concept, uneven execution  Apr 14, 2009 (101 of 109 found this helpful)

  The combination of Jane Austen's classic and zombie horror seemed irresistible to me. However, the book is not as funny as it could have been. There are moments of macabre humor, such as the story of the maker of "fine burial gowns" who has lost most of his business because "few thought it worth the expense to dress the dead in finery when they would only soil it upon crawling out of their graves." Sadly, such moments are few and far between. The zombies add some creepy fun to the Regency proceedings, but the ninja/warrior princess element is just silly. Grahame-Norton makes some ill-advised and pointless additions to the dialogue between Elizabeth and Darcy which add nothing to the story and make their characters seem crude (and even mentally unbalanced in Elizabeth's case). Two-thirds of the way through, it seems the author loses steam, and much of the zombie action falls by the wayside. P & P & Zombies is mildly entertaining, but could have been more.

• Ok, so I'm not the biggest Jane Austen fan, but...  Mar 29, 2009 (372 of 426 found this helpful)

  ... but...
  1) It is an excellent mashup
  2) It has freaking Zombies... I mean 'unmentionables'
  3) I started reading it in the local store this afternoon and have wasted most of the afternoon reading it.
  4) Did I mention the Zombies?
  
  If you like 'Good Omens' you'll like this.
  If you like 'Shaun of the Dead' you'll like this.
  If you're literate you'll like this.
  If you're a zombie you probably won't

• Finally, The Unexpurgated Version  Apr 20, 2009 (47 of 54 found this helpful)

  I was an English major in college when I encountered Pride and Prejudice for the first time. I loved it--after a semester of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, it was nice to be reading a romance novel for a change.
  
  But in the end I was unsatisfied. There were so many questions left unanswered: What could conceivably induce Chrlotte Lucas to marry the intolerable Mr. Collins? What were those soldiers even doing in that part of England when, at the time Austen was writing the book, she would have supposed them in Brussels, fighting Napoleon? How could Mr. Bingley's balls exact such excitement from an entire community? Now I have the answer: (Spoiler Alert) Zombies.
  
  With the addition of Zombies, everything in Pride and Prejudice falls into place. Miss Lucas's marriage, Lady Catharine's widely held respect, even Elizabeth's remarkable self control and discipline makes more sense now that I know of her training in the orient.
  
  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies shows that occasionally due an excessive concern for popular sentiment or commerical appeal, an editor may be a trifle too liberal with the red pen. When I think of the generations who have been deprived of this edition, my only comfort is knowing that, with Miss Austen listed as primary author, librarians will now be shelving Pride and Prejudice and Zombies alongside the original redacted version.
  
  Now that the Zombie barrier has been breached, I look forward to reading Of Mice and Men and Zombies, Being and Nothingness and Zombies, Crime and Punishment and Zombies, and War and Peace and Zombies, which, with the reinsertion of the Zombie scenes, will finally be a substantial read.
  

• I have been redeemed...  Mar 24, 2009 (119 of 147 found this helpful)

  After suffering through Pride and Prejudice in a women's lit class in high school, being one of the three males in the class, and undergoing much embarrassment for my lack of understanding of the subject matter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is bittersweet redemption. It was very nice while reading this to feel as though I am exacting revenge on Jane Austen's literary masterpiece by not only understanding the work but also enjoying a pseudo-perverse amalgamation of her work and a horror/comedy film.
  
  No doubt some Austen fans will cry "heresy" at what Seth Grahame-Smith has done, that is take a classic piece of literature and splice in zombie references, but I think others will accept this work as the kind of flattery that it is to Ms. Austen. Others, like myself, who were intellectually incapable of understanding the works of Jane Austen, will feel sweet vindication from enjoying her great work with a smidgen of added immaturity.
  
  There is no doubt that Grahame-Smith has accomplished something incredibly innovative with this work, possibly spawning a new literary-classic-remade-hilarious genre, and there is also no doubt that he has done so very well.
  
  I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys comedy, zombies, and classic women's literature- and I never thought I would recommend anything on those terms.