Vampires are so 2009

Edward Cullen? Please. Sexy werewolves? Pah! Gay psychopaths who murder fifteen year old boys so they can turn them into love zombies? Yes please. In Zombie, Oates offers up the tale of a young serial killer, Q___ P___ living in a small college town working as a caretaker for an international students' dorm. In his off hours he fantasizes about anal sex with submissive corpses, and drafts a plan to lure a high school student into the back of his van so that he can lobotomize him. Ultimately, the plan works, minus the lobotomizing part. The cops find the body, Quentin is questioned and- thanks to the influence of his professor father and an expensive lawyer - released. The end. Oates tells the story from the point of view of QP, relating his murders and strategies in the same tone you or I might use to talk about a trip to the grocery store. After about fifty pages his thoughts start to make an odd sort of sense. This is what Oates does best, create characters who claw their way into your head to fatten themselves up on your brain. You realize what's happening to you but you're powerless to stop it, though really you won't even try. Oates is a master hypnotist when she wants to be. Finishing Zombie was like surfacing after being under water for just a minute too long. The world felt newer, shinier somehow, but also more sinister, pregnant now with the promise of eventual death.