I don’t know what it is about Halloween, but I always find myself attracted, even if only briefly, to the horror genre of book and film. This year was no exception, and on the recommendation of a friend, I picked up this book.
World War Z, by Max Brooks, is an oral history detailing the experiences of a host of characters during the great zombie war. The book is set in the not-too-distant future and runs with the premise that a viral invasion has caused the undead to rise again in typical zombie-esque fashion. The thriller details the war from Ground Zero (Patient Zero) to approximately twelve years after.
The Good
There’s much I could say here… Max Brooks has a fluid, natural style to his prose that is so uncommon for one as unpublished as he is (this was his second book). To say that his writing reads well would be too benign; no, his writing pours from the page with a simplicity and comprehension relegated to a handful of truly great authors.
More than the prose, however, is the remarkable depth of research into both hypothetical apocalyptic scenarios and, more particularly, the range of human response. Beyond accounting for every conceivable response in the scope of human emotion, Brooks is intelligent enough to recognize that there are even greater heights and deeper depths that the truly stressed mind will reach.
His descriptions of individual and national responses to the crisis are deeply chilling, disturbing, and much more frightening than the undead, but they are also natural, believable, and utterly unshocking. Any other writer would have created this book in a way where each scenario played out in surprising disbelief, but Brooks has created an expectation that when the unbelievable and shocking happens, you not only believe it, but you accept that there truly was no other way.
The Bad
My only real complaint here is the language. The book is certainly not something your grandmother would read.
I debated listing the horror aspect, but if you pick up a zombie book and are disturbed by the horror…. Leave it to say that you took the first step.
Conclusion
I think this book is probably mislabeled as horror. It’s truly not scary. It’s not a book that is going to keep you up at night thinking of the moaning dead lurching through windows and doorways, although that is certainly a large part of the story and the imagery is resoundingly horrible. But this will keep you up at night pondering the reprehensible nature of what an apocalyptic world might actually be like. And while that is psychologically disturbing enough, Brooks paints the happiest possible ending without descending into Disney or Hollywood styles.
A treasured read. Truly. Probably not one I will return to again in the near future, but also one I will not soon forget. It’s being made into a movie currently, and I can sincerely say that I hope it’s not rated R even though I have little to no expectation that it won’t be.
One final accolade… It is truly rare that you encounter a genre-defining work, especially in a genre as old and worn as zombies, but World War Z is not just genre defining; it is arguably the opening salvo of a true literary mastermind. In the future, it would not only surprise me to see World War Z as the standard by which all zombie literature is compared, but to see Max Brooks appropriately seated as the keeper of this particular gate.
A full Four Stars for this one.