Reviews for Every Sigh, The End
Review by Leah Clarke
FlamesRising.com
The subtitle of this 2007 Permuted Press offering is ‘A novel about zombies.’ This isn’t entirely true. Ross fills his days with selling bootleg horror movies, cheating on his two-timing girlfriend and hating life in general. He feels trapped in a vicious circle of uselessness.
Just as he begins to resign himself to the mid-twenties twilight he seems unable to escape, he starts to notice men in radiation suits, following him. Filming him.
Yes, zombies do turn up eventually, but they’re more of a backdrop. They’re part of the scenery. Admittedly they’re scenery that bites and moans, but they are as much the focus of the story as the various houses that the protagonists pass through.
So, if this isn’t a novel about zombies, what is it?
In a nutshell, it’s Chuck Palahniuk with zombies. I have it on good authority that the author hates to be compared to Chuck Palahniuk, but the comparison is easily made. Not so much because their styles are similar (although they do both make use of a chorus), but the themes they explore and the cynicism they use in the process.
They also both manage to make this bleakness come off as truly depressing, rather than annoyingly whiny. I almost put the book down after the first sixty pages–not because I wasn’t enjoying it, quite the contrary. It was just that Ross’ cynicism and self-doubt were rubbing off on me.
Still, the Palahniuk comparison didn’t occur to me till I started writing this review. During the reading of the novel itself, I was too busy trying to figure out what was going on to wonder about how best to describe the book.
The plot hinges on mystery. It works, because it keeps the reader sufficiently interested to slog through the confusing bits. However, the confusing parts were trying. Although everything comes together nicely by the end of the book, Hornsby makes his audience work hard.
There is more than enough incentive to push yourself as a reader, though. You’re coaxed through the confusing plot twists and chronological jumps with hints and suggestions of a greater conspiracy. No matter how much is revealed, there is always something held just out or reach to keep you going.
If you’re looking for a zombie book with a twist–or rather, a twisted book with zombies–then Every Sigh, The End is definitely the book to pick up.
Sarcade's Webblog:
Every Sigh, The End, by Jason S. Hornsby.
Cross Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama in particular with Dawn Of The Dead and you get an inkling of what this one is like. The author’s style is very reminiscent of Ellis’ authorial voice, as noted in the frontal acknowledgements. Which means that if you have something against Ellis — and a lot of people do, largely for American Psycho but often just because they look at his writing style as dead and nihilistic (I disagree, but that’s a subject for a different entry) — you’ll probably hate this, or not read it, on general principles.
Which would be a shame as it’s utterly gripping, incredibly complex and very satisfying.
The story is told from the first-person POV of a superficially-typical Ellis character: Ross, a twenty-something, relatively monied slacker type whose life mainly consists of predominantly of parties and interrelations with his equally jaded friends, lovers, etc. However, even from the beginning you can tell things are just that little bit off… it’s closing in on New Year’s Eve in 1999, and the world is full of Millennium Bug paranoia, and our protagonist has a different but associated form of paranoia going on. Why does he keep seeing people filming him on street corners? Why are there zombies lurking in the shadows unnoticed by everyone else, with makeup and scene-setting people in tow, who occasionally lurch to astounding violent life and devour random bystanders for real? Why are the roads around his city being slowly, stealthily closed off? And come to that, who exactly are his family and friends… because they’re definitely not who he thinks they are.
As New Year’s Eve closes in and the city streets begin to resemble an apocalyptic movie set, as more and more zombies have their make-up touched up and then are released, as the attacks move out of the shadows and into the mainstream and the real blood begins to flow, dispassionately filmed at close quarters by faceless men in radiation suits that somehow don’t seem to get attacked…
It’s very hard to categorize this. Just rest assured that none of it is what you would expect: leave any and all preconceptions at the door, and settle in for a hell of a harrowing, surreal, conspirational and sometimes metaphysical ride. Ellis and zombies, mix and blend into something utterly other — who would’ve thought? With this book, zombie fiction has stumbled out of its niche level and is, quite frankly, verging on literature.
Bookgasm Review
by Matt Adder
Two things become readily apparent reading EVERY SIGH, THE END: 1) I’m not the only person in the world who thought that LESS THAN ZERO was actually the scariest zombie book ever written, and 2) author Jason S. Hornsby boldly takes on the undead genre with a challenge I haven’t read before. EVERY SIGH, THE END — yes, another novel about zombies — is hip, referential and daring.
The plot requires a bit of explaining — maybe a couple of flow charts, possibly even fractions. I suck at math, so I’ll try and sum it up the best I can: New Year’s Eve, 1999. Professional layabout Ross Orringer is complaining about his life and jaded affair with his girlfriend’s best friend. Ross and his asshole buddy Preston, when they aren’t getting stoned, dub those hard-to-find classics you saw in the back of old-school FANGORIA. It’s not much of an existence, but it beats being dead.
Oh, and along the way to the New Year’s party, Ross can’t shake the feeling that he’s done it all before. And that he’s being secretly followed by a television crew recording his every move. The writing is witty and engrossing, even as unlikable as the two main characters are. This is a tribute to the talent and genius of Hornby, who makes a guest appearance in his own fiction. The story is worth it.
In ways that still confuse me — despite two readings of the book — Ross is the experiment in some reality television show, where a zombie attack on his new millennium celebration keeps eyeballs peeled to the TV. Farfetched? I don’t know. I mean, who’s got more brains: a zombie or Paula Abdul? I’d watch. Hell, I’d even go to the live show if they turned them loose on the AMERICAN IDOL cast.
The most frustrating thing about EVERY SIGH, THE END is trying to figure it out, make it logical. So don’t — some things aren’t meant to wrap up nicely. It’s not due to lack of design. On my second reading, I just went with the beautiful flow. Hornsby has given us one of the strangest and intellectual offerings I’ve read in months.
Horrorscope Book Review: Every Sigh, the End (A Novel About Zombies).
By Chuck McKenzie
Jason S. Hornsby, Permuted Press, 2007
Ross is a fairly average guy: he runs a business with his best friend, producing VHS copies of public-domain zombie movies, has issues with his family (particularly his sister), and is cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend in retaliation for his belief that she is cheating on him with his best friend. In short, life sucks, but so what? Then Ross slowly becomes aware of people watching him: in the street, at parties, even in his own home. Or are they? Is his paranoia baseless? And what – if anything – do these watchers have to do with his friends and family? And why do the strange events leading up to New Year’s Eve 1999 – culminating in a deadly zombie attack upon the party he attends – seem so familiar? Is it possible that Ross has experienced these events before? And why, in the midst of a real-life zombie massacre, is a movie crew taping every move Ross makes?
Every Sigh, the End is a zombie novel that doesn’t just turn the genre on its head, but delivers a violent kicking to that head for good measure. There’s simply no way I can suitably convey just how surreal and genre-bending this tale – which involves zombies, government conspiracies, time-travel, alternate realities and universes, the apocalypse, and pirated copies of Zombie Apocalypse – really is, except to say that this is the sort of zombie novel Phillip K. Dick might have written, had his tastes run that way. In fact, labelling Every Sigh, the End a ‘zombie novel’ is almost unfair, because the zombies themselves don’t feature all that prominently, except as a vehicle to usher in all sorts of apocalyptic weirdness for our protagonist: take away the zombies altogether, and you’d still have a Bloody Good Novel, one that grips the reader from beginning to end (‘unputdownable’ is a horrible term, but I can think of no other in this case). In fact, I’d go so far as to describe Every Sigh, the End as a Great American Novel – that is, one which holds up a (in this case, very uncomplimentary) mirror to the American Way of Life – up there with Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird. Only with more zombies.
I’m declaring Every Sigh, the End a certified Must-Read. For everyone. One of the best books I’ve read this year.
FlamesRising.com
The subtitle of this 2007 Permuted Press offering is ‘A novel about zombies.’ This isn’t entirely true. Ross fills his days with selling bootleg horror movies, cheating on his two-timing girlfriend and hating life in general. He feels trapped in a vicious circle of uselessness.
Just as he begins to resign himself to the mid-twenties twilight he seems unable to escape, he starts to notice men in radiation suits, following him. Filming him.
Yes, zombies do turn up eventually, but they’re more of a backdrop. They’re part of the scenery. Admittedly they’re scenery that bites and moans, but they are as much the focus of the story as the various houses that the protagonists pass through.
So, if this isn’t a novel about zombies, what is it?
In a nutshell, it’s Chuck Palahniuk with zombies. I have it on good authority that the author hates to be compared to Chuck Palahniuk, but the comparison is easily made. Not so much because their styles are similar (although they do both make use of a chorus), but the themes they explore and the cynicism they use in the process.
They also both manage to make this bleakness come off as truly depressing, rather than annoyingly whiny. I almost put the book down after the first sixty pages–not because I wasn’t enjoying it, quite the contrary. It was just that Ross’ cynicism and self-doubt were rubbing off on me.
Still, the Palahniuk comparison didn’t occur to me till I started writing this review. During the reading of the novel itself, I was too busy trying to figure out what was going on to wonder about how best to describe the book.
The plot hinges on mystery. It works, because it keeps the reader sufficiently interested to slog through the confusing bits. However, the confusing parts were trying. Although everything comes together nicely by the end of the book, Hornsby makes his audience work hard.
There is more than enough incentive to push yourself as a reader, though. You’re coaxed through the confusing plot twists and chronological jumps with hints and suggestions of a greater conspiracy. No matter how much is revealed, there is always something held just out or reach to keep you going.
If you’re looking for a zombie book with a twist–or rather, a twisted book with zombies–then Every Sigh, The End is definitely the book to pick up.
Sarcade's Webblog:
Every Sigh, The End, by Jason S. Hornsby.
Cross Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama in particular with Dawn Of The Dead and you get an inkling of what this one is like. The author’s style is very reminiscent of Ellis’ authorial voice, as noted in the frontal acknowledgements. Which means that if you have something against Ellis — and a lot of people do, largely for American Psycho but often just because they look at his writing style as dead and nihilistic (I disagree, but that’s a subject for a different entry) — you’ll probably hate this, or not read it, on general principles.
Which would be a shame as it’s utterly gripping, incredibly complex and very satisfying.
The story is told from the first-person POV of a superficially-typical Ellis character: Ross, a twenty-something, relatively monied slacker type whose life mainly consists of predominantly of parties and interrelations with his equally jaded friends, lovers, etc. However, even from the beginning you can tell things are just that little bit off… it’s closing in on New Year’s Eve in 1999, and the world is full of Millennium Bug paranoia, and our protagonist has a different but associated form of paranoia going on. Why does he keep seeing people filming him on street corners? Why are there zombies lurking in the shadows unnoticed by everyone else, with makeup and scene-setting people in tow, who occasionally lurch to astounding violent life and devour random bystanders for real? Why are the roads around his city being slowly, stealthily closed off? And come to that, who exactly are his family and friends… because they’re definitely not who he thinks they are.
As New Year’s Eve closes in and the city streets begin to resemble an apocalyptic movie set, as more and more zombies have their make-up touched up and then are released, as the attacks move out of the shadows and into the mainstream and the real blood begins to flow, dispassionately filmed at close quarters by faceless men in radiation suits that somehow don’t seem to get attacked…
It’s very hard to categorize this. Just rest assured that none of it is what you would expect: leave any and all preconceptions at the door, and settle in for a hell of a harrowing, surreal, conspirational and sometimes metaphysical ride. Ellis and zombies, mix and blend into something utterly other — who would’ve thought? With this book, zombie fiction has stumbled out of its niche level and is, quite frankly, verging on literature.
Bookgasm Review
by Matt Adder
Two things become readily apparent reading EVERY SIGH, THE END: 1) I’m not the only person in the world who thought that LESS THAN ZERO was actually the scariest zombie book ever written, and 2) author Jason S. Hornsby boldly takes on the undead genre with a challenge I haven’t read before. EVERY SIGH, THE END — yes, another novel about zombies — is hip, referential and daring.
The plot requires a bit of explaining — maybe a couple of flow charts, possibly even fractions. I suck at math, so I’ll try and sum it up the best I can: New Year’s Eve, 1999. Professional layabout Ross Orringer is complaining about his life and jaded affair with his girlfriend’s best friend. Ross and his asshole buddy Preston, when they aren’t getting stoned, dub those hard-to-find classics you saw in the back of old-school FANGORIA. It’s not much of an existence, but it beats being dead.
Oh, and along the way to the New Year’s party, Ross can’t shake the feeling that he’s done it all before. And that he’s being secretly followed by a television crew recording his every move. The writing is witty and engrossing, even as unlikable as the two main characters are. This is a tribute to the talent and genius of Hornby, who makes a guest appearance in his own fiction. The story is worth it.
In ways that still confuse me — despite two readings of the book — Ross is the experiment in some reality television show, where a zombie attack on his new millennium celebration keeps eyeballs peeled to the TV. Farfetched? I don’t know. I mean, who’s got more brains: a zombie or Paula Abdul? I’d watch. Hell, I’d even go to the live show if they turned them loose on the AMERICAN IDOL cast.
The most frustrating thing about EVERY SIGH, THE END is trying to figure it out, make it logical. So don’t — some things aren’t meant to wrap up nicely. It’s not due to lack of design. On my second reading, I just went with the beautiful flow. Hornsby has given us one of the strangest and intellectual offerings I’ve read in months.
Horrorscope Book Review: Every Sigh, the End (A Novel About Zombies).
By Chuck McKenzie
Jason S. Hornsby, Permuted Press, 2007
Ross is a fairly average guy: he runs a business with his best friend, producing VHS copies of public-domain zombie movies, has issues with his family (particularly his sister), and is cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend in retaliation for his belief that she is cheating on him with his best friend. In short, life sucks, but so what? Then Ross slowly becomes aware of people watching him: in the street, at parties, even in his own home. Or are they? Is his paranoia baseless? And what – if anything – do these watchers have to do with his friends and family? And why do the strange events leading up to New Year’s Eve 1999 – culminating in a deadly zombie attack upon the party he attends – seem so familiar? Is it possible that Ross has experienced these events before? And why, in the midst of a real-life zombie massacre, is a movie crew taping every move Ross makes?
Every Sigh, the End is a zombie novel that doesn’t just turn the genre on its head, but delivers a violent kicking to that head for good measure. There’s simply no way I can suitably convey just how surreal and genre-bending this tale – which involves zombies, government conspiracies, time-travel, alternate realities and universes, the apocalypse, and pirated copies of Zombie Apocalypse – really is, except to say that this is the sort of zombie novel Phillip K. Dick might have written, had his tastes run that way. In fact, labelling Every Sigh, the End a ‘zombie novel’ is almost unfair, because the zombies themselves don’t feature all that prominently, except as a vehicle to usher in all sorts of apocalyptic weirdness for our protagonist: take away the zombies altogether, and you’d still have a Bloody Good Novel, one that grips the reader from beginning to end (‘unputdownable’ is a horrible term, but I can think of no other in this case). In fact, I’d go so far as to describe Every Sigh, the End as a Great American Novel – that is, one which holds up a (in this case, very uncomplimentary) mirror to the American Way of Life – up there with Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird. Only with more zombies.
I’m declaring Every Sigh, the End a certified Must-Read. For everyone. One of the best books I’ve read this year.
date
newest »
newest »
If only I could find a way to get a major critic or reviewer to take a look at either ESTE or 1123, that would be ideal. I just need exposure. The books, hopefully, stand on their own.
I'd never thought of Less Than Zero as a zombie book, but it totally works.