Outlandish and emotional, this humorous novel centers on Sheldon Funk, a struggling actor who dies in a bus restroom only to awaken during his autopsy and attack the coroner. Fleeing into the wintry streets of Toronto, Sheldon realizes he’s now a zombie—as if he didn’t have enough on his plate already. His last audition, reading for the reality television series House Bingo, had gone disastrously wrong. His mother is in the late stages of dementia, his savings are depleted, his agent couldn’t care less, and his boyfriend is little more than a set of nice abs. All Sheldon has to his name is a house he can barely hold onto and a cat that is more pillow than mammal. Now he also has to contend with decomposition, the scent of the open grave, and an unending appetite for human flesh—and on top of it all, there’s another audition in the morning. In order to survive his death without literally falling apart, Sheldon must find a way to combine his old life with his new addiction, which would be a lot easier if he could stop eating vagrants. A hysterical take on fame, love, religion, politics, and appetite, this is the story of the “everyzombie” people long to be.
close this panelCorey Redekop is an author, a publicist, and a librarian. He is the author of Shelf Monkey. He lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
close this panel"Very funny and full of nifty surprises, the story has a big heart, too. . . . The ending is appropriate and packs a serious emotional wallop. Highly recommendable—perhaps to more than zombie geeks." —www.BooklistOnline.com
"Camus meets Palahniuk in a darkly comic, but surprisingly light-hearted mind-meld in Corey Redekop's Husk. Sure, the protagonist is a zombie, but this is 2012, and as Redekop rightly observes, we're all zombies now." —Andrew Pyper, author, The Guardians and The Killing Circle
"Sheldon is actually a sensitive and sympathetic creation. . . . Zombiedom's entire pop culture heritage has been thrown against the wall in bleeding chunks, where much of it sticks." —Toronto Star (September 30, 2012)
"Husk is a completely original and welcome oddity. To put it plainly, this novel has guts." —The Coast (January 17, 2013)
"Fans of transgressive U.S. writer Chuck Palahniuk or Jerry Stahl's gonzo novel Painkillers -- which theorizes that Nazi physician Josef Mengele is alive and living in San Quentin State Prison -- will appreciate Redekop's dark humour and the wild twists and turns Husk takes." —Winnipeg Free Press (October 20, 2012)
"This first-person perspective provides a neat twist, and the author cleverly divides his novel into sections corresponding to Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief." —Publishers Weekly (August 27, 2012)
"[W]hat gradually emerges is a tender portrait of a profoundly lonely man who finds love and acceptance only after his body has betrayed him . . . an enormously funny book that has real emotional heft underneath all the blood." —Quill & Quire (September 2012)
"In this wild, vicious romp through pop culture, Husk rips the heart out of the rotting zombie genre and shoves it down your throat. Infection never hurt so good." —Peter Darbyshire, author, Please and The Warhol Gang
close this panel
