World War Z by Max Brooks
Unlike much of America, I have not succumbed to the current rage of vampires, werewolves, zombies and care bears. Ok, I’m pretty into care bears right now, not sure if anyone else is but I’m trying to bring em back. Despite my lack of interest in the former three things I decided, upon recommendation from a book store clerk, to read Max Brooks’ World War Z, which is all about zombies, hence the “Z,” get it?
Naturally I had no idea about this, but it turns out that Mr. Brooks himself is a zombie know-it-all, who knew such a thing existed. Apparently before writing this book he wrote a book titled The Zombie Survival Guide, in which he describes how a common citizen, that’s not me though cause I’m not “common,” can survive a zombie attack. In World War Z Brooks takes the whole zombie thing a little bit further.
Unlike his previous book Brooks actually goes ahead and provides us with the zombie epidemic, attack and war, as though it was an event which truly occurred, and how the world reacted and battled to regain control of the planet. Before zombies became cool there was this incredible movie that came out called 28 Days Later (yes, it is one of my favorites). It took me awhile to correlate the book and movie to one another but basically they are one and the same, minus the full on warfare. You know zombies everywhere, taking over, difficult to destroy, escape plans, hiding and all that.
Brooks takes a unique way of investigating the war though. Instead of merely telling the story he serves more like a journalist investigating the aspects of the war. He begins of course with a section focused on the “warnings” prior to the start of the war and goes through a progressive time line ending with a section titled “good-byes.” To accomplish his journalistic endeavor Brooks does a fantastic job of giving the reader perspectives from individuals all over the world who saw something different in the way the zombie war unfolded for them.
I don’t know who I would actually recommend this book to though. I kind of think it would take a certain type of person to enjoy it. While the some of the stories told by the interviewees are really interesting, detailed and revealing, others border on absurd (even given the context) or misguided. But Brooks is certainly not lacking in the originality and creative categories, I want to make that clear.
Certainly one of the more original aspects of this book is that it reads like a non-fiction book. I mean if you can let yourself really get into it, you can’t help but think this is something that really happened. It’s almost got that “War of the Worlds” feeling to it where some hermit could read this book forty years from now and almost believe the zombie war actually happened.
