Publishers Weekly
★ 05/04/2020
A highly contagious rabies-like virus that turns its victims into homicidal maniacs drives this standout thriller from Stoker Award winner Tremblay (The Cabin at the End of the World). The state of Massachusetts is under quarantine, hospitals are overwhelmed, and people are panicking as authorities struggle to maintain order. After Natalie Larsen, who’s eight months pregnant, is bitten by an infected neighbor in an attack that kills Natalie’s husband, her pediatrician friend, Ramola Sherman, attempts to get her to a hospital for a vaccine before it’s too late. When this proves unsuccessful, the two women embark on a desperate odyssey across a nightmarish eastern Massachusetts landscape in hope of reaching a safe place to deliver Natalie’s baby. Along the way, they’re threatened by rabid animals, roving rabies-infected victims, and frightened local militias. Their journey becomes even more hopeless as the first symptoms of Natalie’s rabies begin to appear and Ramola must confront a decision she dreads to make. The vividly drawn characters of Ramola and Natalie give the story an uncommon emotional intensity. This is genuinely hard to put down. Agent: Stephen Barbara, Inkwell Management. (July)
From the Publisher
"Survivor Song is a small horror story. A personal one. A fast and terrible one that is committed beautifully to the page. . . . It exists in a pandemic world where all choices are bad ones. Where things unravel faster than you can possibly believe. Where happy endings are transactional: they come with a cost. Because Survivor Song isn't a fairy tale. It's a horror story." — NPR
"For the past few years, Paul Tremblay has been setting the standard for modern horror. His genius is that he never forgets the core of a great horror novel resides first in its characters. In Survivor Song, he revitalizes the zombie novel by keeping the focus narrow and intimate: two women, in the space of a few hours, just trying to get across town. The result is heartfelt and terrifying, in a narrative that moves like a bullet train." — Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters and Wounds
"Inventive… an emotional punch… There is plenty here traditional zombie fans will recognize and enjoy.” — Boston Globe
“A cinematic scope, scenarios grounded in the real world, and a breathless pace make this thriller one of the must-read titles of the summer. A prescient, insidious horror novel that takes sheer terror to a whole new level.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The vividly drawn characters of Ramola and Natalie give the story an uncommon emotional intensity. This is genuinely hard to put down." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Absolutely riveting. I haven’t been able to put it down." — Stephen King
"Tremblay has earned worldwide acclaim because he is able to seamlessly combine reality with speculative elements, and his newest may be his most prescient yet. . . . Gorgeously written about terrible things, the relatively short Survivor Song is a good choice for fans of pandemic epics . . . and novels that probe themes of friendship, family, and social commentary amidst chillingly realistic horror." — Booklist (starred review)
“[F]resh and surprising. Survivor Song may be one of Tremblay’s best – beautifully detailed, viscerally frightening, and deep with emotional resonance.” — Dan Chaon, New York Times bestselling author of Ill Will
"Tremblay is an undeniably skillful writer. The sentences are lean where they need to be, decorative where they need to be. . . . He knows how to drive the story forward, while affording it a layer of linguistic color.” — New York Times
"Survivor Song will leave emotional trenches in your heart long after you’ve finished trying to ugly-cry and read at the same time. . . . A gift to readers right here, right now. — Cemetery Dance
“Survivor Song is a breathlessly compelling read, powerfully frightening and very moving – a nightmare that rings all too terribly true.” — Ramsey Campbell, author of The Wise Friend
“Gripping . . . a thinking person’s thriller, interspersed with moments of hilarity . . . a buzz-saw of a novel.” — Los Angeles Times
"A terrifyingly realistic take on the zombie trope. . .A fast-paced, gritty, emotionally wrenching thriller." — Book and Film Globe
"Survivor Song is a horror novel with a lot of heart; an engaging, immersive, touching, fast read that’s incredibly timely and packed with sharp observations. I would say it’s one of Tremblay’s best, but that is something most reviews say, so instead I’ll say this: Maine has its horror guy, and now Massachusetts has its guy." — Vol 1Brooklyn
"Brutality spreads in this novel as swiftly as the wild epidemic Tremblay has invented. A daring, terrifying work packed with horror, but also with larger questions about what meaningful survival might be." — Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew
"[Tremblay's] warmest and most humane book to date. Eruptions of violence are answered by moments of poignancy." — The Guardian
"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." — Tor.com
"In Survivor Song, Paul Tremblay offers an unsettling journey across New England as two women, one a doctor, the other her pregnant best friend, try to outrun a rabies-like virus. It’s both an achingly lovely exploration of female friendship and a terrifying race against time. I was fighting tears and gasping out loud and couldn’t put it down." — Damien Angelica Walters, author of The Dead Girls Club
"Intensely gripping, shocking, and raw, Survivor Song is a visceral ride through a couple of hours of a deadly disease outbreak. Tremblay pulls no punches, but you wouldn't want him to––his characters are real people, and it's the brutal honesty that helps this terrifying song soar." — Tim Lebbon, author of Eden
“Perhaps this novel is not meant to frighten us or to give us nightmares. Perhaps it is meant to give us hope—hope that one day we may all bravely unite together and fight against a common enemy. Perhaps, one day, we will all be able to stand together and sing that survivor song. Regardless of its intent, horror fans are going to be talking about Survivor Song for months after its publication.” — SFRevu
"Packed full of emotion and suspense, Survivor Song is so gripping it may as well have been glued to my hands. Paul Tremblay is a master of modern horror.” — Alison Littlewood, author of The Crow Garden
"Prescient." — Chicago Tribune
Nathan Ballingrud
"For the past few years, Paul Tremblay has been setting the standard for modern horror. His genius is that he never forgets the core of a great horror novel resides first in its characters. In Survivor Song, he revitalizes the zombie novel by keeping the focus narrow and intimate: two women, in the space of a few hours, just trying to get across town. The result is heartfelt and terrifying, in a narrative that moves like a bullet train."
Cemetery Dance
"Survivor Song will leave emotional trenches in your heart long after you’ve finished trying to ugly-cry and read at the same time. . . . A gift to readers right here, right now.
Los Angeles Times
Gripping . . . a thinking person’s thriller, interspersed with moments of hilarity . . . a buzz-saw of a novel.”
Idra Novey
"Brutality spreads in this novel as swiftly as the wild epidemic Tremblay has invented. A daring, terrifying work packed with horror, but also with larger questions about what meaningful survival might be."
Dan Chaon
[F]resh and surprising. Survivor Song may be one of Tremblay’s best – beautifully detailed, viscerally frightening, and deep with emotional resonance.
Ramsey Campbell
Survivor Song is a breathlessly compelling read, powerfully frightening and very moving – a nightmare that rings all too terribly true.
Booklist (starred review)
"Tremblay has earned worldwide acclaim because he is able to seamlessly combine reality with speculative elements, and his newest may be his most prescient yet. . . . Gorgeously written about terrible things, the relatively short Survivor Song is a good choice for fans of pandemic epics . . . and novels that probe themes of friendship, family, and social commentary amidst chillingly realistic horror."
Alison Littlewood
"Packed full of emotion and suspense, Survivor Song is so gripping it may as well have been glued to my hands. Paul Tremblay is a master of modern horror.
Boston Globe
"Inventive… an emotional punch… There is plenty here traditional zombie fans will recognize and enjoy.”
Damien Angelica Walters
"In Survivor Song, Paul Tremblay offers an unsettling journey across New England as two women, one a doctor, the other her pregnant best friend, try to outrun a rabies-like virus. It’s both an achingly lovely exploration of female friendship and a terrifying race against time. I was fighting tears and gasping out loud and couldn’t put it down."
Stephen King
"Absolutely riveting. I haven’t been able to put it down."
Tor.com
"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."
Book and Film Globe
"A terrifyingly realistic take on the zombie trope. . .A fast-paced, gritty, emotionally wrenching thriller."
Tim Lebbon
"Intensely gripping, shocking, and raw, Survivor Song is a visceral ride through a couple of hours of a deadly disease outbreak. Tremblay pulls no punches, but you wouldn't want him to––his characters are real people, and it's the brutal honesty that helps this terrifying song soar."
New York Times
"Tremblay is an undeniably skillful writer. The sentences are lean where they need to be, decorative where they need to be. . . . He knows how to drive the story forward, while affording it a layer of linguistic color.”
NPR
"Survivor Song is a small horror story. A personal one. A fast and terrible one that is committed beautifully to the page. . . . It exists in a pandemic world where all choices are bad ones. Where things unravel faster than you can possibly believe. Where happy endings are transactional: they come with a cost. Because Survivor Song isn't a fairy tale. It's a horror story."
The Guardian
"[Tremblay's] warmest and most humane book to date. Eruptions of violence are answered by moments of poignancy."
Chicago Tribune
"Prescient."
Vol 1Brooklyn
"Survivor Song is a horror novel with a lot of heart; an engaging, immersive, touching, fast read that’s incredibly timely and packed with sharp observations. I would say it’s one of Tremblay’s best, but that is something most reviews say, so instead I’ll say this: Maine has its horror guy, and now Massachusetts has its guy."
SFRevu
Perhaps this novel is not meant to frighten us or to give us nightmares. Perhaps it is meant to give us hope—hope that one day we may all bravely unite together and fight against a common enemy. Perhaps, one day, we will all be able to stand together and sing that survivor song. Regardless of its intent, horror fans are going to be talking about Survivor Song for months after its publication.”
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-04-15
When a virulent and potent form of rabies upends life as we know it in Massachusetts, a pregnant woman and her pediatrician must fight for survival.
Tremblay reached rare new highs in the horror genre with the superbly creepy novel The Cabin at the End of the World (2018) and the Twilight Zone–esque story collection Growing Things (2019). Now, in the midst of a real-life health crisis, Tremblay delivers an eerily prophetic story about a mass outbreak of a rage-inducing virus and the havoc that ensues—basically, he's gone full-on Stephen King by way of 28 Days Later. The story opens in a small, woodsy community south of Boston where what seemed like a relatively mild rabies problem has jumped to humans, who are driven to violent rages and overtaken by a compulsion to bite as many other victims as possible to spread the disease before they eventually succumb and die within a short time. One of our protagonists is Natalie, a very pregnant woman whose husband is violently murdered by one of the outbreak victims right before her eyes. Desperate, bitten, and infected herself while also in shock, she reaches out to her pediatrician, Dr. Ramola “Rams” Sherman, to help her get a dose of the rabies vaccine before she has the baby or succumbs to the illness. Now it’s a race against time to save Natalie and the baby, all while communities are being ravaged by violence. Meanwhile, the outbreak is exacerbated by “a myopic, sluggish federal bureaucracy further hamstrung by a president unwilling and woefully unequipped to make the rational, science-based decisions necessary.” Encounters with well-meaning strangers and near-death escapes are punctuated by Natalie’s sweet recorded messages to her unborn child. A cinematic scope, scenarios grounded in the real world, and a breathless pace make this thriller one of the must-read titles of the summer.
A prescient, insidious horror novel that takes sheer terror to a whole new level.
