THE PECULIAR SUPERPOWERS OF ELEANOR ARMSTRONG

High school drama, heartbreak and zombies.

Schloegel’s meta-novel features lovelorn teens battling a zombie invasion, but the real emotional stakes are found in the interstitial blog entries of “plain/unusual” protagonist Eleanor Armstrong–a fiercely intelligent, alienated high school student working out her issues through writing about the undead and other horrors of secondary education. The superpowers referenced in the title refer to the beauty and popularity of Eleanor’s protagonist and stand-in, Sarah, a plucky “pop girl” with a smart mouth pitched somewhere between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Juno. Sarah negotiates her friendship with social pariah Marky and crush on popular boy Brandon while repelling zombies with admirable aplomb, but Eleanor has serious trouble with her relationships, including a strained detente with her emotionally reserved FBI agent father, a new wrinkle in her cozy bond with a nerdy friend and a disturbing discovery about her younger brother that leads Eleanor, most improbably, to an interest in weight lifting and the discovery of her unexpected superpowers. The zombie sections of the narrative are funny and scary in the best zombie-apocalypse tradition, and the revelations about Eleanor’s life in her blog posts deftly contextualize the action of her novel and deepen the emotional impact of both stories. The back-and-forth banter between Eleanor and Marky reads as authentic and smart teenspeak, and Schloegel convincingly conveys the desperation, loneliness and, above all, boredom of adolescence–a boredom that drives students to prey upon each other like the reanimated corpses that menace Sarah and Brandon. Eleanor has an instantly believable and engaging voice, a bracing moral intelligence, generosity of spirit and her novel is a hoot.

An inventive, exciting, funny ride with surprising emotional resonance–a bloody good time.