If you’ve been paying attention, you know we here at BOOKGASM can resist no zombie book. Max Brooks’ WORLD WAR Z: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE WAR may be the most high-profile of them yet, even coming out in hardback.
The novel is exactly what it says it is: A series of loosely connected interviews with various survivors of the worldwide zombie plague. Because of government repression (and censorship), our narrator notes in his introduction that he thought it vital his story – meaning everyone’s story – be told. Thus, we get more than 300 pages of roughly chronological accounts and remembrances (in transcripts, interviews and monologues) of the zombie war, from coast to coast, hemisphere to hemisphere.
With so many stories being told from so many disparate characters we barely get to know, there’s not much to latch onto. The brief chapters may make WORLD WAR Z bathroom-friendly, but it also keeps it from achieving cohesion. The subjects range the gamut of interest, depending on your tolerance for cliché – of course, you get the point of view from the righteous scientist, but who would’ve expected one of a retarded girl?
Brooks sold a lot of copies of 2003’s THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, a “humorous” how-to parody that had nary a laugh in it. To his credit, he’s not trying to be funny here (which must be hard when your own father is Mel Brooks), and he more than acquits himself as a good writer. But the recent small-press BRAINCHILD did it better, at a fraction of the pages, with none of the marketing muscle and exponentially more imagination. –Rod Lott
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