If you told me a book centered around a zombie would become one of my all time favorite books, I’d never believe you. Until now.
It Lasts Forever And Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken isn’t just about zombies and the afterlife. In fact, it mostly isn’t. Our narrator is a zombie herself, who can’t remember her own name; she also can’t remember her lover’s name, but wants nothing more than to find them and their memories in the afterlife. She searches for months, trying to find the remnants of what they had together. It’s a beautiful meditation on longing and searching and loving and remembering, holding the remaining fragments close as she does anything to find more. This drive, this hunger to find more.
What’s so unique about this story is for a book following a zombie in an apocolyptic afterlife, it is an incredible exploration on humanity. The idea and meaning of humanity can vary from person to person. To me, humanity is very dependent on the emotions and feelings you hold onto, especially in relation with other people. It’s the instinct that you follow in all your relationships: how you feel, how you act, how you love. This book is so special because our narrator is no longer a human, yet holds onto the feelings she had as a human that other zombies around her had mostly let go of.
Our narrator only has pieces of memories left with the person she loves so much. She doesn’t even have any names to work with, yet she continues forward because the love in her heart will never dissipate. This is what separates her from the rest – the pieces of her, in her undead form, clinging to the feelings she knew and trusted as a human.
It was meant to last forever. She was meant to be with them forever. And then it was over, and our narrator had almost nothing of them left. But she will never let go of what remains, she will continue to hold it close, wherever she goes. Wherever she ends up.
It Lasts Forever And Then It’s Over has some of the most beautiful writing I’ve read and is such a unique concept that I will remember this book for the rest of my life. After I finished it, I started reading it over again, and it is just as good the second time around. The writing in this book reminded me a lot of Clarice Lispector, with how philosophical themes and paragraphs were interwoven with the story itself. 5 stars, I highly recommend it.
Thanks for reading!
by sbucksbarista