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Book Review: The Apocalyptic Mannequin by Stephanie M. Wytovich

The Apocalyptic Mannequin: Poetry by Stephanie M. Wytovich

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-947879-13-3

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

It is shocking and deeply disturbing to know that in the aftermath of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, many people continued to survive, suffered through radiation poisoning, and then died. This living death is the theme of a relentless catalogue of ugliness in The Apocalyptic Mannequin: Poetry by Stephanie M. Wytovich.

Wytovich intends this collection to be a warning about the end of the world, or the end of the world as we know it, through war, violence, disease, and finally death. The images in these poems accomplish this goal by painting a setting littered with bloated dead bodies, twisted metal and ashes. Bodies transform into “meat,” clothing into “gasmask couture,” and survivors into “mannequins” who wander the apocalyptic landscape crawling with plague and vermin, barely able to survive or inevitably wanting to commit suicide.

The poems build a narrative in snapshots from the chaos of the first post-impact days, through the struggle to find relief, and, ultimately, to what will be the new normal. Wytovich deftly uses sensory details to create transitions between groups of poems. The initial poems are extremely dark with scenes of destruction that reduce the imagery to a handful of repetitive words that mirror the setting in a literal way.

The next group of poems represents a middle stage in which the survivors struggle to make sense of a world in which they have lost communication. They feel left alone to make sense of a situation in which they must now protect themselves from other people in need who bang at their doors and windows. The speaker in these poems recognizes that the survivors must start over and “re-make Eve” “with the tree of knowledge growing” in their “wombs.”  However, this is not to say that there is much hope because in the final group of poems, instead of new plants growing, there are  ”blossoms of collagen” with “the forest floor” growing “femurs.” The imagery in this section involves shape and color to describe the poisoning of the environment.

In the final group of poems, the imagery becomes more familiar and symbolic because its origin is memory. The speaker’s heart is hidden in “trunks of abandoned cars” and “empty cafes,” and she feels like a “broken doll.” But the world has changed, and so has she. After experiencing tragedy, hunger,  anger, and abandonment, she has turned into a scarred “scavenger” and a witch who has “woken.” Meanwhile, the new world is, ironically, still full of impending death. That is its toxic message to us in these poems.

 

Contains: body horror

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: The Apocalyptic Mannequin was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Poetry

Book Review: Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Del Rey, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-399-18210-5

Availability: hardcover, audiobook, ebook

 

It’s inevitable that any 782 page magnum opus about the end of the world like Wanderers will get compared to the two titans of the apocalyptic pantheon, Stephen King’s The Stand and Robert McCammon’s Swan Song.  Wendig’s tome compares fairly well. The prose is excellent, character development is strong, and the plot has plenty of surprises.  Wanderers might have been able to join the other two at the top of the mountain, but it does have a couple of faults.  The story sputters to a muddled conclusion at the finish line, and the author’s insertion of his own political beliefs into the stories detracts from the strength of some of the characters, reducing them to stereotypical cardboard cutouts.

 

14 year old Nessie one day starts walking down the driveway in an unresponsive trance, leaving the home she shares with her older sister Shana and her father. Others with the same symptoms soon join her, and soon there is a pseudo-parade of walkers and supporters marching across the country, although no one knows where they are going.  The real focus of the story, however, isn’t the walkers themselves, it’s the reaction of the rest of the country to them.  Are the walkers carriers of a new disease?  A sign from God?  Messengers of the devil?  They become national news in an election year, and reactions vary from solidarity with the walkers to outright violence against the “devil’s parade”.   It becomes a race for medical professionals to find the cause of the trance-walking, set against the backdrop of a country on edge due to its own political beliefs about the walkers.

 

There isn’t much to dislike in the book.  The author writes extremely well in a tight-but-loose fashion, the story peppered with numerous asides and pop culture references that give the book a unique feel.   This is truly a character-driven story.  It’s not so much about what the characters do: how they think, feel and respond to their own lives, and the world falling apart around them is what keeps the story flowing.  Summing up the actual actions of the first 500 pages could be done in a few sentences, but that would miss out on the richness of the characters’ thoughts and emotions.  The plot itself is an unusually complex take on the “end of the world” scenario, as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology play a part.  It is partially a detective story, and it’s not an easy puzzle to figure out, especially with the final twist inserted in the last few pages.

 

The drawbacks to Wanderers are minor, but they prevent a good story from becoming a great one.  As noted, the final showdown between good and evil was a bit convoluted and didn’t really fit the rest of the story.  The real problem is the author’s use of stereotypes when it comes to his antagonists from the conservative side of the political spectrum.  These make the villains far too predictable in their actions and reasons.  Author Wendig also has a bad habit of inserting his own liberal beliefs into the story as narration asides, not as part of the character development.  That damages the narrative, when it is written from the author’s point of view to make a political case, and not to further the story.

 

Overall, Wanderers is a well-written, epic saga of the end of the world, and well worth the time investment to read its almost 800 pages.  However, conservative readers will have to put aside their own feelings and viewpoints to enjoy reading this.  Otherwise, they will probably get mad and quit within the first 100 pages.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, mild gore, racial slurs, rape

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Editor’s note: Wanderers was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Book List: Pandemic Fiction Recommendations

There are a lot of books out there to choose from if you want to jack up your anxiety levels right now by reading about pandemics, but there are a few that are far-out enough that you can probably read them without comparing them to our current situation. Whether they’re set in the future, supernatural in nature, or just outside the realm of probability, these books offer us pandemics that can’t touch us.

The Fireman by Joe Hill. The pandemic is caused by a spore that spreads a condition called “dragonscale” that eventually causes the infected to overheat and spontaneously combust. Harper, the main character, who is infected, pregnant, and a nurse, is a complex and fascinating character coping in the midst of panic, disease, isolation, and fear.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.  First off, I am biased towards anything by Connie Wills, but this really is a compelling book, impossible for me to put down once I start it. Willis has written a series of time travel novels and short stories that take place at Oxford University, mostly in the history department, headed by Mr. Dunworthy.  Kivrin, one of his students, has been preparing to visit England near the time of the Black Plague, but due to an error in timing, ends up in the midst of it, a stranger in a community that is disintegrating and literally dying. In the future,  plague is spreading speedily through Oxford, which has been locked down in quarantine procedures, and when it is discovered that the tech running the time machine is patient zero, Dunworthy’s superior shuts down the department entirely, leaving Kivrin lost in the past and pandemics raging in both places. Despite the terrifying circumstances, Willis manages to find humor in the humanity and oddities of many of the characters in a story that is dead serious.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This book has gotten plenty of attention, including compliments from George R. R. Martin. It is post-apocalyptic, varying between a storyline about a group of musicians and actors traveling between the small communities left after a pandemic killed off most of the people, and vignettes about the past, and the people who died from the disease, described in a memorable fashion.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks:  If ever you wanted an alternate history of how an outbreak can spread and lead to massive changes in the world, you’ve got it here.  Brooks uses a different narrative approach than readers may be used to, with his work consisting of short narratives, or “interviews” with different people who lived through the outbreak and the zombie war.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra: In this series of graphic novels, disease has killed off all the men except one, Yorick Brown, and his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand. I don’t consider this horror, but it is a brilliant concept, and pulled off beautifully.