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The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotton (2010)

by Harrison Geillor(Favorite Author)

3.61 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Night Shade Books

series

Lake Woebegotten

review 1: Mr. Geillor or Keillor, depending on the mood you are in, is one of the greatest story tellers ever. In general this book is very funny and made me smile a lot. There were a few parts that dragged here and there, but that's the nature of Lake Woebeggoten. The dead decided to come back to life and munch on the living after a meteorological event causes some oddness in the atmosphere. People in the mortuary decided they weren't so keen on sleeping anymore and decided to chow down on the living. A bus load of tourists crashes and unleashes the zombie hoards on the town. Once that starts there is no stopping it.What I love about the story is that the Minnesotans and Norwegian descendants still act the same as if nothing really changed. Eileen Munson decides to kill her ... morehusband, because he's really boring her. He is the mayor and through an election, she becomes the mayor. She is more worried about keeping her power than keeping away the zombies.The Catholic priest and Lutheran minister decide to join forces and form a Zombie Hunting group. They enlist, unwillingly, Mr. Levitt, who apparently has been a serial killer all these years. Even though the townsfolk usually know everything that happens in town, they leave people alone for their unique pleasures. As the zombies, including some zombie animals, start turning the leaving into the undead, there are fewer and fewer town officials left. When Stevie Ray becomes the police chief I kept thinking about Carl the police officer in Jumanji. He's totally outgunned, but somehow manages to do all right.The ending is pretty funny as the bad guys get their comeuppance, but the last scene leaves us with a little bit of concern for our heroes.
review 2: Anyone who is a fan of Garrison Keillor will get a huge kick out of this book. Unlike other recent parodies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies springs to mind) this novel is more than a one-trick pony. In fact, the zombie part of the book is pretty straight on. Maybe it’s because I am from the Midwest, but the characters in this book felt extremely real to me and the way they dealt with the zombie apocalypse seemed more realistic than in many other zombie/post apocalyptic novels I have read (and I have read quite a few). So the zombies are not the joke, it is the setting that is endlessly—and lovingly—lampooned. It is evident that the author admires Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories; only someone who appreciates the sly wit and self-awareness of those yarns could have written such a spot-on imitation. The people of this tiny town in the middle of Minnesota react to the rise of the undead with a laconic “Well, that sure is somethin’ ya don’t see everyday” attitude that made me laugh out loud. Short asides examining everything from the nature of winter (“it wasn’t as cold as the first time he went fishing with his father as a boy, the coldest winter on record hereabouts, when your ears would pretty much just turn to ice and snap right off”) to how to make hot dish could have been taken from any of Keillor’s stream-of consciousness Lake Wobegon radio stories. The characters, too, exhibited Keillor touches, like the kid who had taken a college course in zombie literature and kept trying to analyze the zombie mayhem around him (“"It seems to me we're dealing with the classic George Romero Night of the Living Dead sort of zombies”) and the Norwegian bachelor farmers. And like the object of his parody, the author understands that beneath the perfect façade of a perfect small town, there lurk enough nutcases to fill several novels. Many times, I caught myself wondering if Keillor actually did write this book, that’s how good it was. I must add that I listened to this book in its Brilliance Audio version, narrated by Phil Gigante. This actor does a really fantastic imitation of Garrison Keillor that added even more to my enjoyment of the piece. He does many different voices, too, so that each character really comes alive. I will definitely be listening to it again, on the next road trip my husband and I take to Minnesota. less

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