Heralded as "Twilight for zombies", I was definitely glad to find that this book had much more depth than the vampire trilogy. There is a romance, but it takes a backseat to the idea that "zombies are people, too." Notice the present tense of that sentence - surely you've heard the tongue-in-cheek slogan that encourages proper treatment of our undead brethren.
In S.G. Browne's Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, main character Andy Warner finds himself turned into one of the undead because of a car accident that killed both him and his wife. For some reason, only he reanimated, and his life has been hell ever since his parents picked him up from the Santa Cruz SPCA. Due to his state of decomposition, his parents, friends, and the general population ostracize him, which leads him to spend that majority of his time in his parent's basement, drinking away their wine collection. He can't speak, due to his vocal cords being damaged in the car accident; instead, he's reduced to writing on a board hanging from his neck.
When he's not in his parent's basement, he attends Undead Anonymous, where a group of likeminded (or like-dead?) individuals all discuss their deaths, their issues with reanimation, and how to best deal with a population who would rather see them truly dead rather than just shambling around on the street. It's there that Andy meets Rita, a suicide who loves to eat lipstick because of the formaldehyde in it, and Jerry, another car crash victim who accepts his zombie-ness with a little more enthusiasm than anyone else in the group. They quickly befriend the silent Andy, giving him a little more to "live" for as they stagger through a world that no longer recognizes them as anything but corpses. This is especially underlined when a new member joins their group, and is viciously mauled by a group of frat boys on Halloween, ending in his death.
And then Ray Cooper is introduced; this renegade zombie hunts deer, or so he claims, and jerkies their meat for later consumption. He offers it to the group, and slowly they begin to notice changes. They're decomposing less; they're even starting to look a little more like, well, living people. It's quite clear that Ray's magical jerky isn't just venison, but Andy doesn't care. He and Rita have formed a loving relationship, he's starting to find more grounding and fight harder for his rights to be recognized as a person. He also starts to realize that he isn't a person as more and more of his new zombie tendencies begin to surface, at first showing in the killing and refrigeration of his parents. As much as he'd like to think that he is who he used to be before he died, Andy comes to eventually realize that he is now a zombie, and he has to start fighting back before someone decides to permanently put him down.
It's really refreshing to see a take on zombies that pits it not only from their point of view, but does so in a way that raises questions of life after death, how that would redefine death, how these people would be treated, the obvious issues with property and spouses and children that would arise. The zombies are not only victims of their death, but become continuous victims afterward because they go against everyone's expectations of death. It's basically like dying all over again, only in a slow, horrible fashion. The book goes to great lengths to detail the kind of world they live in, much in the same vein as many popular vampire and werewolf books have these days. Zombies have always been around, and documented accounts of them can be found all the way up to the Civil War. Newly turned zombies are usually captured by Animal Control, where the next of kin are contacted to see if they want custody of their dead. If they aren't picked up, then they're put down, like any other stray. Zombies have identification, like any pet, and cannot live on their own without some kind of Breather (the zombie word for human) sponsor to claim that they're not wrecking havoc.
Overall, the book is written in a wonderfully detailed and humorous fashion, that shows the frustration of the main character while being entertaining. The sarcasm and depth of the book definitely help the reader to truly understand how Andy and the other zombies feel utterly helpless against this thing that has happened to them, how the people around them are totally unforgiving of their condition, and shows parallels to our own world, with how we treat people like invalids, the homeless, and others who don't fit into the expected standard.
Now to see if they can keep that tone in the upcoming film.
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