Sam Downing

World War Z is one of the all-time greatest books of all time, so of course I rushed out to read its forebear The Zombie Survival Guide with the frightening speed of a 28 Days Later-style zombie¹.

I was not disappointed: Brooks’s style is both weirdly realistic, darkly humorous, and incredibly detailed. The man has given a lot of thought to zombies and how one might escape them. And you have to respect that. (Though I disagree with his contention that remaining in a dense urban area following the zombie apocalypse is a bad idea. Once the majority of the population flees the zombies are sure to disperse after them, leaving you in safety, or relative safety at least, and surrounded by plentiful supplies. Right…?)

But if you’re not a huge zombie aficionado and one zombie book per lifetime is your upper limit, I’d recommend World War Z over Survival Guide.  The narrative thrust of World War Z is far more compelling and potent, whereas Survival Guide has literally no story (at least till the final chapters, which detail “suspected” zombie attacks throughout history. And even they don’t really form a true narrative). It is what it says it is – a survival guide – and though it’s superbly written some readers may find that the joke wears thin pretty quickly.

1. which, it’s made clear in Survival Guide, aren’t real zombies, who are lumbering idiots fixated only with feasting on the flesh of the living [↩]

You know when a book is so good, its scope so wide and so imaginative, that it leeches into pretty much every thought you have? World War Z, an epistolary novel documenting mankind’s battle against rising zombie hordes,  is one of those books.

For example: I read it while holidaying in the Cook Islands, on a tiny dot of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “I’d be pretty safe from a zombie invasion here,” I thought. Then: “… right? What if the zombies crossed the sea somehow? What if the island became crowded with refugees, who carried the zombie infection? Would my hotel room provide a safe place to hide from zombies?” (I decided it wouldn’t.) It’s an exciting book, in the literal sense of the word.

It’s told as a series of short stories documenting the experiences of people all over the world¹ before, during and after the zombie apocalypse, and though I’m not paticularly enamoured of the zombie genre (all those eviscerations and eyeballs hanging from stalks. Eeeeewwwww), World War Z is fascinating in its realism. Yes, realism. It’s an odd word given the subject matter, but this truly feels like what would really would happen if a mysterious virus started turning its victims into the flesh-hungry living dead. The human weaknesses that allow the zombie plague to spread and the (sometimes shockingly cynical) strategies that enable the survivors to win are convincing, propped up by Brooks’s incredible attention to detail – especially when he imagines scenarios that aren’t immediately obvious: what would happen aboard an international space station during a zombie invasion? How do you train dogs to detect and attack the living dead? What animal species would be ravaged by the zombie war (spoiler alert: the whales bite it. Sad face)?

What’s also surprising is that World War Z isn’t a gore-and-guns splatterfest that glorifies weapons and gung-ho violence. It’s hopeful, unexpectedly uplifting, partly because it’s set after humanity’s victory (mostly) over the zombies), so you know it has a happy ending (again, mostly); but also because it’s a celebration of humanity’s pluck and moxy. Many of the people respond to the zombie crisis as selfishly as you’d expect, but many more behave admirably. (And there’s a strong satirical undercurrent that keeps it all from ever becoming too mushy – win!)

If you’d rather listen than read, the audiobook sounds excellent, and the upcoming film adaptation is also promising.

The book almost makes me wish that the zombie apocalypse really will happen. Fingers crossed it won’t break out till after I track down a copy of Brooks’s companion book, The Zombie Survival Guide…

1. Unfortunately, Australia is hardly mentioned. Did we endure the zompocalypse or not?! [↩]