Blaine's Reviews > World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.
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Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.

I first read this book at least ten years ago, back when Mr. Brooks’ choice to use the science and language of epidemiology was simply considered a clever way to write a zombie novel. So, how does this story feel now that we’re living through an actual pandemic? It’s even more impressive. Mr. Brooks spent considerable effort making his story realistic, and life has shown how right he was. A pandemic that begins in China and engulfs the world, helped by a Chinese government suppressing the truth. The willful blindness of the public (aided by a broken media system) to grasp the true magnitude of the outbreak. Cynical charlatans selling bogus cures. The failure of the international community to work together to stop the outbreak, and politicians sadly more focused on the economy than the public health. There are so many things in this book that might have felt farfetched before but look eerily prescient now.

The oral history method of storytelling is used to great effect here. The interviewees come from all walks of life; this is not just a ‘heroes and generals’ type of story. These first-person vignettes are often narrow in focus, moving, and even harrowing, and each character has a distinctive voice and manner of speaking. But by regularly shifting to a new narrator—across all seven continents, in cities and under them, on and under the oceans, even in outer space—we eventually get the full, grand scope of the story: the initial outbreak, safe zones, refugees, ecological problems, the loss of and eventual rebuilding of hope and civilization.

World War Z is a completely original, wonderfully imaginative, and chillingly realistic novel. It’s a good read that has become a must read.

P.S. If you can find the unabridged audiobook (it was originally released with only an abridged one), it’s very good and has a great cast.