Highway bodies by Alison Evans
Echo Publishing, 2019. ISBN: 9781760685027. 366 pages, paperback.
(Age: 14+) What you will find in Alison Evans' second novel is a
book full of friendships, love, acceptance, genderqueer teens, oh
did I forget to mention zombies, there are lots of zombies, yep,
lots of them.
The novel centres on three groups of adolescents that come from the
outskirts of Melbourne and travel through the Victorian country
side. Each chapter is seen through the eyes of three characters who
are genderqueer and the adventures they have in their groups. The
groups are: *A trans girl who is attracted to girls who befriends a
girl. Both do not have a name. *Dee (a bisexual girl), Poppy, Jack
and Zufan who belong in a band. *Jojo (non-binary and bisexual) and
Rhea, who are twins. Hope all the LGBTQI notes haven't confused you
because it does confuse me but I'm getting better.
Anyway, I did enjoy this book and it reminded me of the different
zombie T.V. series out there like The walking dead and Z
Nation. It was an easy read, once you got pass the fact that
there aren't any letters being dropped or strange sentence
structures you find with the trans girl narrative. I thought I was
misreading the text at first. It's the way she talks like so any of
my students.
Highwway bodies is a book full of gore and violence and also
full of love and protectiveness of family, born and bred.
I can see teenagers and YA fans enjoying Highway bodies.
Maria Komninos