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| (Cover Artist: Rob Wilson) |
Over the course of it's three-season run, the podcast version of Alice Isn't Dead incorporated themes of police violence, racism, sexism, and homophobia, all within the context of a genuinely original work of horror fiction. In contrast to the absurdist comedy that Fink is famous for writing in Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn't Dead told a gritty and often genuinely frightening story about the willingness of individuals to ignore injustices hidden in plain sight. This was a work of horror whose underlying suspense came not only from the shambling monsters that gleefully chase its protagonist across both the urban and rural communities of America, but instead Fink's simple observation that for a nation whose past is marred by slavery, genocide, and systemic oppression, the greatest demon our society must face may well be our capacity for apathy. The podcast version of Alice Isn't Dead is not so much the story of a "terrifying government conspiracy to hide the truth" as it is the story of a conspiracy so vast that it doesn't really require concealment.
It's for this reason that I was curious how this inherently political work would be adapted into prose fiction, and I'm happy to say that the 2018 novelization of Alice Isn't Dead retains many of the same core elements that made the original so compelling. Fink succeeds in this book not merely by retracing the most important plot points of his podcast, but also expanding on the original story--providing background to antagonistic figures such as the "Thistle Men," the frightening but brilliantly named "Police Instigator," and the enigmatic Oracles that his first narrative couldn't convincingly explore due to the restrictions of its format.
Where this book stumbles is primarily in its opening chapters. Rather than taking the time to establish the main characters to new readers, the novel version of Alice Isn't Dead instead plunges headfirst into some of the podcast's gorier scenes, beginning with a kind of "cold open" in which Keisha watches as the creature that becomes the primary villain for the first third of the book physically eats a still living truck driver before her eyes.
In the original story, this scene managed to evoke a sense of isolating helplessness that eventually powered some of the podcast's more compelling subtexts, yet here the rapid-fire action sequences lose almost all meaning. One of the original story's defining moments came (at least for me) in the first season episode "Nothing To See" in which Keisha is attacked by the "Thistle Man" and turns to a police officer for help, only to then have that officer ignore her pleas and accuse her of stirring up trouble while her attacker leers at her from just feet away. By contrast, the novel's take on this same moment only amounts to a hollow "gross-out" sequence, with even the main character having yet to have been properly introduced to the readers.
This is a shame, not merely because it criminally undersells what really turns into quite a disturbing and profound story, but also because the emotional and thematic background which these early moments of the book lack is actually present later in the novel. Personally, I would much rather have started this book by reading more a subdued prose rendering of the events that Keisha constantly recalls in the ensuing text--the days immediately following Alice's ambiguous disappearance when Keisha struggled with her own conflicted feelings of grief and hope, unable to accept the advice of her friends and family to let go of Alice's memory, all while being haunted by the paranoid suspicions that her wife may have lead a secret life she never knew of.
This story is related in both the novel and podcast, just via brief flashbacks and paragraph long moments of exposition scattered throughout the main narrative. Because Alice Isn't Dead is a story about the process of recognizing the injustices that exist both within and alongside modern society, it only seems natural that this book should have begun with that moment when Keisha chooses to abandon the superficial security of her daily existence to confront those horrors head on.
Instead, the novelized version of Alice Isn't Dead begins only with a hollow series of action sequences that leave the reader feeling dazed, and a little disgusted.
This shortcoming is not story-breaking. If you can stick with this book through its early chapters then it will ultimately offer everything the original podcast did, if not more. I rarely find myself drawn toward the horror genre, as I often grow bored with this genre's more prevalent tropes of zombies, vampires, and other stock monsters. Fink however is a writer who understands the true thematic resonance of the material he's working with, and draws on fears more universal than jump-scares and gross-out gore-fests. In Alice Isn't Dead, he manages to create a story that is at times awkward, but also unique, imaginative, and (a little unexpectedly) hopeful.