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Despite having the word "Zombies" in the title this novel is far from your typical zombie fare. If you're looking for a brain munching gore-fest, you may want to look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you're familiar with the Billy Wilder directed film-noir, The Lost Weekend, based o n Charles R. Jackson's 1944 novel of the same name about an alcoholic writer, then you're in for a real treat.It is within this context that The Last Weekend: A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools is a great suc...
There may be spoilers lurking in this review....This is a difficult book to review, as I really liked a lot of it. It reads like Charles Bukowski has tried to write a zombie book and for the most part succeeds. It is really well written, but the main problem is the protagonist is essentially a dick. I really wanted him to get killed but as its written in the first person you can guess how that goes. I really liked all the parts set in the apocolypse, but the sections detailing life before hand w...
Despite what you’ll hear from reviewers and excited readers in the next few weeks, Nick Mamatas has not reinvented the zombie novel with The Last Weekend; he has created a new subgenre that brings together the best elements of horror, noir, and literary fiction while simultaneously poking fun at those genres. As if that wasn’t enough, the novel also offers a narrative that’s as much about zombies as it is about exploring a deeply flawed character and the way society changed/stayed the same after...
This is a zombie book in the same way The Historian is a vampire book: These supernatural creatures do exist within the scope of the story, but are on the periphery while the main character fixates on the past.It didn't take long for Billy, the main character, to vault himself into the lofty echelons of characters I desperately want to punch in the face. And it was non-stop. There was never a moment in this book where I didn't want to give this guy a beat down. I don't believe this is bad writin...
I raved about Nick Mamatas’s THE LAST WEEKEND a year ago, when it was only available as a signed, limited edition hardcover. Now it’s available in paperback and Kindle. Like Bryan Smith’s SLOWLY WE ROT, Nick’s new book is a zombie novel that’s not about zombies. Instead, it uses that tired old trope as a backdrop for something more. In Smith’s case, that was an examination of social anxiety, loneliness, alcoholism, and insanity. In the case of THE LAST WEEKEND, alcoholism and social anxiety are
Read 2/19/15 - 3/1/153 Stars - Recommended to fans of zombie lit that actually focuses more on the lit than the zombiePages: 215Publisher: PS PublishingReleased: March 2014 (overseas)How do you become a better writer? Apparently, you drink like a fish, sleep with a lot of chicks while your heart desires the one you can no longer have, develop a strong sense of self-loathing, and pray for a zombie apocalypse. That's what Nick Mamatas' The Last Weekend really boils down to.A bit of a high-brower,
My original THE LAST WEEKEND audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.The Last Weekend, by Nick Mamatas, is billed as a novel of “zombies, booze, and power tools,” which may be the truthiest bit of truth in advertising that ever was. This sucker is chock full of all three, and each are at the core of Billy Kostopolos’s world and, to a degree, his identity.The Last Weekend is told in first-person, so we get to know Billy pretty well (whether we like it or not). Billy is...
This is crap! Don’t buy it, borrow it or read it. A waste of time!
Not bad. But would it have killed Mamatas to throw in a Greek fisherman's cap?
This is presumably about a zombie uprising that oddly stops at America's borders and a mystery that may be hidden in San Francisco City Hall. What it's really about is the obnoxious navel-gazing of a sexist, possibly homophobic, alcoholic creepster who repeatedly tells us how much he hates his life and contemplates suicide yet also enjoys showing off by quoting his favourite novels and can't get over the one woman that he had sex with for 3 months years ago. Maybe I could put with him if the nov...
Per FTC guidelines this review for The Last Weekend by Nick Mamatas is for a book received for free in a Goodreads.com First Read Giveaway.This is a publication by the publisher Night Shade Books for the 2014 British release of The Last Weekend by Nick Mamatas. This novel annoyed me right from the minute I opened the package, and read the review quote by Brian Keene. The quote starts with “The Last Weekend is a headshot to a tiresome trope….” Ok that is some pretty cheeky words from a man who ha...
Probably Mamatas's most accessible novel (at least of those I've read), in that the protagonist slots into a recognized archetype: the self-destructive drunk. Also one of the most unromantic views of apocalypse I've ever read. Most writers and many readers think that a level of gritty savageness saves their apocalypses from being romantic, but even after the power grid fails, they're still looking for heroes and villains and the redemptive arc and moral uplift. Even THE ROAD has good guys. Not s...
Mamatas channels the spirit (for lack of a better phrase) of Fante and Bukowksi, but puts his own spin on the struggling-loser-drunkard-wannabe-writer story, plus the zombie apocalypse, satirizing all comers, including yourself and himself. Funny, maddening, disturbing, often all at once. And there's a scene in here that has more emotional punch than six seasons of the Walking Dead. Some lazy non-post-apocalyptic weekend I'd like to re-read this back-to-back with John Fante's ASK THE DUST. Artur...
The Last Weekend is not your typical zombie apocalypse novel. It takes zombie literature to a whole new level. Unfortunately the book adds a sort of cerebral tone that isn’t what typical readers of zombie fiction are used to. It’s true with most zombie stories that the focus isn’t on the zombies but on the survivors (i.e. Walking Dead). The Last Weekend is no exception.The story follows Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolis, who is currently trying his post apocalyptic trade as a “driller”, a person who de...
How to Successfully Read The Last Weekend:- First read The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson (or see the movie if you're just a tourist about it), and anything else you can think of written about writers and drunks (especially when they are authored by drunken writers--Hemingway, Bukowski, you know the drill), and then congratulate yourself the whole time just like the protagonist for knowing so much more than will ever be appreciated by the mind-dead zombies of the world.- Have a good idea of jus...
A zombie book not really about Zombies. The Zombies are backstage to the story about a jerk of a guy who is a real alcoholic. He has taken a job as a Zombie killer for the city. He meets a couple of crazy women who see past his current problems all while he is sweating the girl he can't have. Some funny stuff and some cringe worthy moments made it and ok book. Not really for Zombie fans, nor drama fans. I guess if you like books about alcoholic writers who love quoting books, and whom are on a d...
Having never read Nick Mamatas before I really didn't know what to expect. I enjoyed this book , but it was not what I expected. This is not a Zombie Apocalypse novel ... that was the premise, but actually was just a necessary background that allowed Mamatas to flex his literary muscle . I really appreciated his continual patter of dark humor ... this is used in his quest to comment on the absurdities of the human condition . He nicely waxes poetically and with humor on the philosophy of life. T...
I am not sure what to rate this book.It really isn’t a zombie book at all, at least in the typical sense of zombies as allegory for mindless late-capitalist consumption or in terms the influence of imperialism that leads to waves of immigration back to the source of the colonial power that made wherever your people came from a potential shithole. No, this book is about writing. It is also about drinking, but mostly in terms of the conflation of habitual heavy drinking and the ability to write tr...
The nitty-gritty: More literary ramble than horror, Mamatas' bleak look at a changed world is beautifully written with sharp spikes of sudden violence. I signed up for drilling because I couldn’t get down to Mexico. I needed to experience life, to find something to write about. I needed pocket money. My credit score was immaterial, my landlord dead, and as electricity only worked fourteen hours a day PG&E just let the grid run and stopped billing. But the agora bloomed on Market Street...
This is copy 3 of 100 signed numbered copies signed by Nick Mamatas.