PositiveTor.comBy having Ramola remind us time and time again that the infected are not zombies, Tremblay forces us to reckon with the truth that this horror is not supernatural and not beyond the scope of our reality. And, by referencing the meta narrative of a zombie apocalypse, by making references to our own zeitgeist, he imparts the most frightening truth of all: this is not the horror of any possible future in a world that mirrors our own, it is the horror of a possible future in our very own world ... Why does Survivor Song work so hard to keep the reader firmly in the existential terror of the here and now? Is it to scare the shit out of us? It does that, sure. But, no, it’s not horror for horror’s sake, torture porn, an apocalypse narrative. Survivor Song actually gives us a solution, and a wonderfully simple one: refusing the lies we tell ourselves because we think they’re helping us survive, when they’re only isolating us from the gifts of others.
