It is pretty obvious that I'm a zombie fan, so this book piqued my interest when I saw it was available at the library. I was also a little afraid because it looked like it would be one of those social commentary, woe is me, weepy sort of books. It was that, but done in such a way to make it a fun zombie book as well.
S. G. Browne does an excellent job of making his zombie characters fully fleshed out. The narrator is just a regular guy who happens to have reanimated after his death. You can really feel the torment he goes through having lost his place in the world, but the narrative never slips into melodrama. Browne keeps things moving with snappy dialog and clever use of zombie folklore.
Using zombies also takes a little of the edge off of the truly terrible things that happen to the zombie cast. There is something funny about a zombie putting on make-up to fit in, or a zombie wearing a sign protesting that zombies are people too.
I hear they are making a movie out of the book. That usually scares me since it is hard to make most good books into films, but I think "Breathers" has a good shot of surviving the translation. The book is dialog and character driven, so a good scriptwriter should be able to make it work. The danger is having the movie slip off into camp or horror. "Breathers" is not horror.
I highly recommend this to both zombie and non-zombie fans. It has something for everyone.
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