A Book So Bad That Once You Start Enumerating Its Flaws, It's Hard to Stop.

Earlier today at GoodReads, I posted a review of Mira Grant's novel Feed. That first link leads to my 2-star review, but here it is in its entirety so you don't have to click:

I really like the world-building in this book. The setting is 25 years after the zombie apocalypse. Zombie-ism is caused by a virus that everyone is infected with, but only activates under certain circumstances: death is one, or being bitten by a zombie, but sometimes someone can convert to the active form for no clear reason. This is a great set-up, as it leads to a culture in which people undergo blood tests to check their viral load constantly--at every perimeter, at the door of every building--because, even though great swathes of the country have been reclaimed from the dead (while others have been given up on), the threat is in the safe zone with everyone, all the time.

I also loved that the virus also infects animals, though only animals over a certain weight convert. In the course of the book, we get zombie horses and zombie deer, which are a great touch and an added source of disquiet and menace.

On the other hand, Grant doesn't think about the implications of her own set-up: though the zombie apocalypse killed a huge proportion of the world's population, the US remains a ridiculously rich nation, with technology (like recording equipment so small it can be worn as an earring) that far surpasses what we have now. Every home has to be fitted with expensive test equipment, and vehicles with armor or other enhancements; Grant never comments on what happens to people who can't afford that (though the story of the communities that are struggling to survive without the fancy airlocks and so on would be an interesting one) or indicates at all what drives this lush economy. Also, you will be glad to know that Starbucks, Apple, Coke and other favorite companies survive the end of the world as we know it.

Sadly, Grant creates this fantastic world only to populate it with tedious, one-dimensional characters whose personalities are all described, not shown. in some cases, the actions of the characters directly contradict what we are told about them. The main character, for instance, is a newsblogger, and she tells us over and over that she is all about the Truth with a Capital T, that she leaves the opinionating to her brother/colleague/creepy crypto-lover. But then every excerpt from her writing that is included in the book is pure opinion.

The presidential candidate whose campaign they are embedded with is a big hunk of 100% pure awesome, while his opponent practically rubs his hands together and cackles with evil glee. No character undergoes any change (except to become a zombie, which doesn't quite count).

The plot, which primarily follows the presidential campaign, is tedious in the extreme. And so is the writing, which describes every single blood test in detail no matter how many times we've heard it before. It also stops telling the story to drop huge chunks of exposition in willy-nilly, and re-uses the same phrases and tropes over and over and over and over (you could have a drinking game for every time the narrator refers to the sting of the testing needle, to her risk-taking brother's habit of "poking zombies with a stick," or to her own completely unsubstantiated commitment to the Truth). Another goodreads reviewer said no other book made him appreciate the work of good editors more than this one. Amen.

I've also seen reviewers compare this to fan fiction. I tell you: I have read better-written, more compelling fan fiction.

* * *

And now, a confession: I wrote that review when I was barely 400 pages into the book's 560 total. And I am still reading it. Why? Though I suspect I know how it ends, I'm just curious enough to keep skimming along just to find out if I'm right.

This gives me plenty of opportunities to observe other flaws in the book. For instance, I can elaborate on one source of the tedium, which is that Grant doesn't know how to telescope mundane activities. For instance, suppose your characters are going into a restaurant, but the actual going in doesn't matter--nothing happens, they don't run into an old friend on her way out, nobody smashes a finger in the door, nobody glances at the newspaper rack and sees an alarming headline that is integral to the plot. They just go in. You might write something like this:

"The four of us headed into the restaurant and ordered eggs and a large pot of coffee."

Your reader can fill in the walking through the door, saying "four please" to the hostess, sitting at the booth, and so on.

Mira Grant writes all that. Her characters approach the door, reach for the handle, grab the handle and pull, hold the door until the next person reaches it, look around as the door closes behind them to see that this is an ordinary little diner, are greeted by the hostess, who is thrilled to see them because [digression into how the zombie apocalypse made public gathering places so risky that most people won't go into them anymore so little diners like this hardly get any business], are directed to a booth, sit down in the booth, pick up the menus and study them, decide on poached eggs (Shaun) and over-easy eggs (George), tell the server their order, and so on...

Grant can slice time into the smallest possible pieces. Into layers so thin that you can see light through them. And all of it with a minute attention to details that do not matter at all.

You want proof, and not just my made-up parody? OK. Three characters get into a car on page 325:

"One day you're going to call me that, and I'm going to punch your head clean off," said Steve, and slammed the door. Shaun laughed. The sound of Steve's footsteps moved around the car, where the driver's-side door opened and closed again.

Really? We need to hear the footsteps? We need it spelled out that Steve had to open the door to get in? "Steve slammed the door and took his place in the driver's seat" would have been more than sufficient, Ms. Grant. I assure you.

On pages 194-195, it takes the main character 8 paragraphs to take some pain pills out of a bottle and wash them down with some water. "When I finished swallowing," is not a phrase you ever need to use. You do not need to have your discursive time* so expanded that people have to stand around waiting for someone to finish swallowing a sip of water.

The biggest boner in the book so far is another example of a character being described one way but acting completely differently. At our house, we think of this as the Will Riker Is A Great Diplomat phenomenon, because in Star Trek: The Next Generation people are always saying that Riker is, yes, a "great diplomat," but whenever Riker is facing some aliens on the viewscreen he's always looking angry and saying, "What the hell is going on here?"

There is a character in Feed who, for 350 pages, is described as a technological whiz. She can, among other things, create security for the news team's computers that is unbreakable, while at the same time breaking through any firewalls they want a peek behind.

And then, on page 365, she has to give the main character the password to her private files and notes.

And it is a significant date in her life. Just that. Not even encoded or anagrammed or mixed up with numbers standing in for letters or anything. Just February-4-2029.

My eight-year-old has stronger passwords than that. The cryptology expert should have rattled off a password more like the one from the first season of Veronica Mars:

Veronica: I need to change the password on my email account. Someone managed to figure out the old one.

Computer guy: That's why your password should always include numbers as well as letters. Everyone thinks its fun to use the name of your dog or boyfriend, but that actually makes it easy to crack. What was your old password?

Veronica: GJ7B!X.

Epilogue, next day: I have now finished the book. My hope that all the tedious details were leading up to something was in vain. I hoped that we were hearing over and over again about people standing in airlocks waiting for the blood-test indicator to turn green because one of these times, it was going to turn red instead. Nope. It was like a play with a hundred guns on the mantelpiece in Act 1--and all of them still there when the curtain rang down three hours later.

Also, while we hear all about doors opening and closing, and Georgia squinting in the sunlight because of her sensitive eyes, and long redundant conversations about politics, the central mystery of the story is solved completely off-screen. We hear that they're working extra-hard, and then suddenly there's a packet of documents that proves everything. It's as if a detective novel were entirely about what the detective wore, where she ate lunch, and her thoughts on education policy, and then in the second-to-last chapter she suddenly says, "Oh, by the way, I've been finding clues and following leads, and the killer is Mr. Smith. Mr Smith, are you the killer?"

Mr. Smith: Yes, yes I am. I did it and I'm glad I did it and I'd do it again. [Shoots self in head.]


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*Discursive time, or story time, is how long it takes for something to be shown or told; as opposed to narrative time, which is time as experienced within the story. A slow-motion shot of something falling down, for instance, has a long story time but a short narrative time, whereas a film cut or chapter break that moves characters instantly from the living room where they're drinking coffee together to the airport where they're saying good-bye has short story time but long narrative time.