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Max Brooks
made a bit of a splash awhile back with the release of his
faux instruction manual The Complete Zombie Survival Guide.
That book is a literal, step-by-step guide to living through
a zombie outbreak: how to escape, how to kill, how to survive.
World War Z is a very different creature. In the form
of one-on-one interviews, Brooks tells the story of "the great
zombie war," ten years after official victory has been declared
in the US. This may sound like yet another tongue-in-cheek
horror novel, but it's a richly-crafted work of social commentary.
The work
is split into sections detailing the evolution of the zombie
menace from young "Patient Zero" in China to the Battle of
Yonkers (the first major offensive battle of the US conflict)
to the different versions of the controversial Redeker Plan
of containment. There is a degree of safety in having the
story detailed in the form of interviews in that the reader
knows that at least the person telling this particular story
has made it out alive, but there are still points that are
excruciating in their horror and the discomfort of hearing
about the human cost.
The various
interviewees allow a global view of the conflict as well as
illustrate the diverse kinds of responses. For example, engineer
Sardar Khan—who was trying to stop the flow of the undead
into the Indian government's mountain stronghold- sees the
conflict and addresses the danger in a completely different
way than mercenary T. Sean Collins protecting an enclave of
rich celebrities on Long Island during the Great Panic.
With
these different views, we also get different kinds of socio-political
commentary. For example, the scenes of celebrity reaction
in Collins' sections harshly criticizes the cult of celebrity
and even some specific thinly-disguised celebrities such as
"that little rich, spoiled, tired-looking whore who was famous
for just being a rich, spoiled, tired-looking whore." There
are also some harsh words for our consumer-driven politics
(though two thinly-disguised political opponents band together
to help boost the war effort) and general culture of (mis)information.
World
War Z has more than could ever be captured in a George
Romero zombie film: the global reaction. In Romero's work—such
as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead—he
implies that the entire world has been taken over, but he
only shows small enclaves of American refugees fighting back.
In Brooks's format, he looks at the zombie menace globally
and adjusts the reaction accordingly. In India, for example,
it was typical practice to make a pilgrimage to a particular
part of the Ganges when one was ill to die peacefully or be
healed. This practice led to the Ganges being virtually overrun
with the living dead from early on. Across Europe, castle
culture and caches of medieval-era weapons made a viable defense
against the "Zed Heads."
Despite
the focus on zombies, World War Z also warns against
the apathy of modern existence. This idea is especially prevalent
in the section regarding Kondo Tatsumi from Kyoto, Japan,
who is so obsessed with using the Internet to learn the latest
information about the zombie epidemic that he is almost killed
before he can use that info.
Though
the content of the interviews is taken more or less at face
value, Brooks throws in a few twists to make readers question
the interviewees' credibility. He also illustrates the different
psychological dangers of facing down the zombie menace: Some
use elaborate psychological walls to make it through the danger;
others give up and become victims of the mysterious ADS, which
causes them to die in their sleep; and still others become
dreaded "quislings," humans who fall into zombie-like behavior
in some last ditch psychological effort to cope. It's these
kinds of philosophical meanderings that make World War
Z a transcendent experience, not just a handheld zombie
flick.
Well-structured,
well-paced, and researched into a viable reality, World
War Z is an amazing novel worth the time of horror fans
and literature fans alike.
(June,
2007)
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