Yeah, that thing in the corner is a thing saying what I’m currently reading. Nifty? Pointless? Meh.
Anyway. My latest find was a book named ‘Generation Dead’ by Daniel Waters. Spoilers, btw.
All over the country, teenagers who die aren’t staying dead.
Against her better judgement, Phoebe finds herself drawn to Tommy Williams. He’s gorgeous, funny, on the football team. And dead.
But not everyone is as accepting as Phoebe. There are those who would like to rid the community of this sinister phenomenom, and they’ll stop at nothing to achieve it..
When I first picked it up I was like, “dude, a ghost story!”. I loved it already. Although it sounded to be a book full of mushy romance (almost like Twilight.. more later) I was still drawn to the whole ‘dead people’ thing. Ever since I saw that film with Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment (’The Sixth Sense’) I have been loving the idea of dead people living. I often quote the legendary Cole Sear in saying “I see dead people.. Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.. They’re everywhere“. Never really read many other ghost stories though. I still get freaked out by things like that (Casper the friendly ghost haunts my dreams. xD).
But this weren’t no “ghost” book. Tommy Williams wasn’t a transparent floating thing like I was expecting, pale as a sheet yet as transparent as steam. He was a full human.. a “corpsicle”, a “zombie”. His skin was a pale bluey-white and colder than normal (not that cold, thankfully), his speech was slower and not as clear as Phoebe’s, and his movement was stiffer and more difficult, meaning he had trouble when doing simple things. He had no heart, no working internal organs, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t smile properly, wouldn’t be able to heal if he was damaged in any way, and couldn’t do normal things like eat, drink or cry. He was just this.. walking dead person; he died in a car crash, then came back to life and walked the earth once more.
Wow.
The story’s basically about this goth girl called Phoebe who listens to Slipknot and wears black clothes. She sympathises with all the “living impaired” people, and finds Tommy quite attractive. Being a poetry writer herself, she wrote a poem about him and followed him into the woods after football practice. She lost sight of him, and was just about to walk away, when the dead boy reached for her, his pale eyes glowing in the darkness. They then start to be friends etc, except everyone frowns upon their friendship, especially this kid called Pete Martinsburg who finds it all horrible and sets out to hurt Tommy while playing football. Eventually this foundation is formed by some random person and Phoebe, Tommy, the other dead kids and a few of Phoebe’s friends (including Adam Layman, the tall kid who sees Phoebe as more than a best friend, quite obviously) join in order to spread understanding about the dead guys. However Pete gets hold of the list of members and sets out to kill them with his rifle (that sounded really pathetic, but it really wasn’t). It all ends on a cliffhanger, one of the boys having died but then, in a matter of minutes, having come back to life.
It wasn’t the best story I’ve ever read, but it certainly wasn’t the worst.
However, so much for mushy romance.. one problem I found was that the whole ‘love’ thing so wasn’t enhanced upon. Like, on the front cover, the line at the bottom blatently says “love knows no boundaries.. even death”. I don’t see that Phoebe and Tommy’s relationship went any further than just going on random ‘dates’ that never turned into anything more than two mates talking. I dunno, I’m probably too used to the lovey-dovey in the Twilight and Noughts and Crosses series and must’ve been expecting too much. But when it says love I usually think it actually means love. Whatever.
Another problem was the character development. I found it hard to read about a bunch of characters that I didn’t know anything about. I couldn’t figure out just how old Phoebe and Tommy were, and their back stories were only mentioned like, once or twice throughout the whole story. I also didn’t find Tommy that funny. Sure, he cracked a few zombie jokes, but overall I got more laughs when watching my cat sleep. I expected him to be this really dreamy teenager who you just wanted to pick up and kiss all over. But nope. Although he was lovable and kind, his character just didn’t seem appealing to me at all. In some places he reminded me of a diluted version of Edward Cullen, especially in his speech.
The writing too seemed a bit rushed to me. It was practically like I was just chucked into this story half way through and had to pick up the pieces by myself. I couldn’t figure out how many days were passing between the chapters, and because they were so small (it felt so, anyway) I kept losing my place and never felt like I was totally there with the characters.
But really, I loved the story. It highlighted the extremes in prejudice and discrimination that made my skin crawl as I read the actions. The ending especially struck me - it wasn’t that emotional (in fact I did find it hard to empathise with some of it) but it did make me feel really weird like I did when reading the racism parts in Noughts and Crosses. Some parts were funny, like the nicknames they all gave each other (Phoebe was dubbed “Morticia Scarypants” often) and the fact that the cat was called Gargoyle. The plot was very unpredictable and really rewarding to read, with new things popping up every second that just made me feel anger towards the prejudiced characters.
Overall I found it quite pleasant to read. Although it definitely wasn’t as good as some other books I’ve read, it was still clever and unique and a greatly rewarding read. Apparently there’s going to be a sequel, and although I won’t be rushing out to get it, I’ll probably get it out at the library or something.
I do praise Daniel Waters - he’s done a great job with this book. I do recommend it for people to just pick up and read. It don’t take too much effort, and I don’t think it’s at all regrettable.
