Dave Farrington.

Zombies with hearts

Damian McCarney


First time novelist Dave Farrington found the key to his first novel in a guide to penning books. ‘How Not to Write a Novel’ was the somewhat counter-intuitive title instruction manual of choice but it helpfully flagged common mistakes for the aspiring novelist and then outlined how to avoid making them.
Whilst he enjoyed the book, Dave discovered that one of the mistakes flagged, was actually the inspiration to his own novel.
“There was a line about writing from the point of view of a zombie,” recalls Dave “and the point they were actually making was that characters need to have feelings and complex inner lives, which, obviously, zombies don’t - they’re a bit one-dimensional. But that stuck in my mind for a couple of days - I thought it might be a challenge, writing a short story from the point of view of a zombie.
“Four of five pages into it and it very quickly became clear it was going to be rubbish, because, basically, the guy woke up and realised he was turning into a zombie - after that he didn’t have any thoughts other than biting people. But then I had the idea that if you cured the zombies then you would be leading to the idea of guilt and remorse and maybe nightmares - and then there’s the social question of what to do with them once you’d cured them.”
The end result is ‘Cured’, the first instalment of a zombie trilogy that Dave will launch this weekend.
It tells the story of self-centred protagonist George Roberts (an anglicised nod to the Night of the Living Dead director, George Romero) and his family. Without giving away too much of the plot, George has been infected with the zombie-disease by his mistress. He’s subsequently cured, before he’s gorged on his loved ones’ innards.
The Celt wonders if guilt is appropriate if you’re a compelled to bite people?
“That would be the argument the cured characters would make,” counters Dave. “If you thought, as the main character does, that you had bitten your wife and children to death, you would feel remorseful about that - even though you would understand that you hadn’t been in your right mind, you hadn’t been in control. I suppose it’s an extreme variation on people using alcohol/drugs as an excuse for their behaviour.”
While Dave is Bolton-born, his family moved to spend his teenage years in Anglesey and it’s in this North Wales island that he choose to set ‘Cured’. Dave began working life helping Manchester’s homeless; upon arriving in Ireland in 1983 he branched into youthwork. He seems to have displayed a natural flair for writing even in his professional life. At the launch of a report he drafted on joyriding in an area of North Dublin a council official described it as a “gripping read”.
“I suppose it was a reasonably well written report,” laughs Dave “but it was meant to be a piece of research. But I suppose that stuck with me and I took a few evening classes in creative writing.”
Dave moved to Mountnugent and currently works as a social-care manager in the Cavan Centre in Ballyjamesduff.
How do people react when you tell them that you’ve written a zombie book?
“I suppose those who know me would have expected me to write something more overtly political, or connected to some of the social issues that I work with but I just always liked zombie movies,” he says with a laugh of guilty pleasure.
Frequently, zombie stories are metaphors for major social issues, consumerism, oppression etc and Dave agrees that Cured has some blood-drenched subtexts.
“Two things,” Dave says, “one is in terms of racism, the cured ‘infected’ still look different to the regular survivors. They retain some of physical changes; changes to the voice - so they are identifiably different. So there are parallels with how minority groups would be treated in some situations.
“The other aspect would be the role of the State - the book begins with the Prime Minister committing suicide through guilt at the strategy he’d overseen - which was a massive overkill. There’s a question there about military intervention, and how that’s managed. There’s also a question of trust - how the State can be trusted, or not trusted to deal with people in the aftermath.”
Dave has modest hopes for this, the first book in his trilogy.
“That it is available to people, they might like to buy it, read it and enjoy it.”
Are you proud of it?
“I suppose satisfied with it. I’d be proud of it if lots of people said that they liked it.”

Book launch
Dave Farrington’s ‘Cured’ will be launched by former Dublin City Councillor Ray Corcoran, and will feature songs performed by Aisling Muckian from County Armagh. All are welcome to the launch in Crover House Hotel on Friday, October 30 at 8pm.