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Don’t Open Your Eyes
Ann Halam (Gwyneth Jones)
Dolphin, paperback, £4.99
Review by Mike Don (2000)

Teenage or Young Adult fiction from Gwyneth Jones’ alter ego. A contemporary spinechiller, bringing an accidentally revived medieval zombie into our everyday world. 

Granted, I’m not in the intended readership, but I didn’t find the supernatural elements particularly frightening, and in truth they’re mostly a hook for the underlying message: don’t be prejudiced. Don’t, in other words, make hasty judgements based on local gossip when you find you’ve moved next door to what might be described (depending on which newspapers you read) as A Dysfunctional Family, or the Neighbours From Hell. A bunch of scallies, to you and me. 

Ms Halam makes the point cleverly; heroine Diesel is black, but what at first seems like heavy-handed political correctness becomes almost irrelevant as the story develops; colour is not the only prejudice. Possibly the moral is laid on a tad heavily, but that might be my cynicism talking.