One day, all of the children in the world die. The world is thrust into mourning. Humanity seems to be over. There is nowhere to put all the bodies. Our cast of characters grieve, each in their own disturbing way, for the loss of a child is always disturbing.
Three days later, the children come back. They struggle out of bodybags crying for their mommies and daddies. When they arrive home, the children die again. Their pulses stop, their bodies decompose. Was it mass hysteria that brought them home? Parents swear their children's eyes are following them.
The children begin to ask for blood. A sacrifice of love. And it brings the children fully to life, cheeks rosy. They play with toys and giggle and get in fights with their siblings. All is right with the world. For a little while. And then they die again. And the true horror begins. What would you be willing to do to bring back your child?
My favorite thing about this book is the way in which it subverts the zombie trope. Zombies are morally unambiguous. It's one of our favorite things about them. They aren't who they used to be and nothing can bring them back and so you just kill them. Simple. Easy. Morally secure. But what if they weren't that way? What if they demanded blood and sacrifice but in return they were your loved ones? What if you could get them back, for a price?
Having a child die is a horrific experience. What would people do if they had to go through it over and over again? To what lengths would they go to get their children back? The best of horror and science fiction asks these sorts of questions, and Suffer the Children passes with flying colors on that part.
The book is very self-conscious in how it understands gender. Traditional gender roles are explored in a realistic way. There are stay-at-home moms and working single mothers. There are men and women both vicious and gentle. And the book explores the feelings of inadequacy that many mothers feel. Feelings placed on them by society that they have to be perfect mothers. And how far will they be willing to go when they've been given a second chance to give everything to their children? The book is subtly subversive. It challenges the idea that parents (and women in particular) should be willing to do anything for their children. Ultimately many of the gender roles in the book are relatively normative. However, the author is careful to keep this work descriptive rather than prescriptive. It is set in our modern time and reflects our modern time, but delicately. So while the characters themselves could be more interesting and subversive, the book carefully reflects what small-town America looks like. And it questions our everyday assumptions about parenthood.
This is a book about pain. About suffering. About impossible moral quandaries. But mostly about guilt. And how the desire to be a perfect parent (and again, particularly a perfect mother) can become something dangerous when taken to it's extreme.
Horror fans, read this book.
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