World War Z by Max Brooks

It has been a long time since I devoured a book, but that is what I did with World War Z over the course of a very enjoyable day.  And when it comes to a book about zombies, devour is a very apt word.

Zombies?  Really?  The book is subtitled An Oral History of the Zombie War, but don't be fooled by the name.  This is a story about what people do when they are confronted with an unrelenting enemy; the zombies are just a satirical device.  

It is not a coincidence that Brooks sets some of the action in countries like Israel, South Africa, North Korea, Cuba and the United States: all these are countries where the resident population (or at least parts of the population) have perceived themselves to be under siege from larger, hostile forces.  Let us not forget that in the real-world cases of Israel and the United States, both countries are building physical walls of separation from their neighbours.

The book is set out in the form of first-hand accounts from survivors of the war, starting from the outbreak of a zombie plague and going through the various phases of the war between the zombies and the rapidly dwindling human population until the war's conclusion.

Brooks has done a marvellous job of giving authentic voices to the several dozen respondents who were interviewed for the history.  We get insights into their psychology as they recount their stories and the actions of those around them, as well as finding out how war on a vast scale impacts the lives of individuals and communities.  The respondents come from a wide variety of nationalities and backgrounds: doctors, soldiers, social engineers, politicians, and ordinary, everyday civilians; Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Iranians, Russians, Latin Americans, Canadians and Yankees.

All of the respondents are eloquent storytellers, and there are some memorable quotes in the book:

Lies are neither bad nor good.  Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.

I must admit, I allowed my emotions to rule my hand. I was the typhoon, not the lightening bolt.

The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts. 

All up, World War Z is an entertaining, well-written and thought-provoking book that asks us what it means to be human.

The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft

No desire have I to recount the horrors I have endured in reading a collection of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, and yet I feel that I must - not for my own sake, for I am lost, but for those who may read these words of mine and, having done so, still harbour hopes of sleeping an untroubled sleep.

For myself, I am now only too aware that there are nameless forces with names like Yog-Sothoth, eldritch entities powerful and malign, waiting to issue into this gloomily adjectival world of ours from dimensions dark and numberless beyond the count of numbers.  

Should they succeed - and who knows how many of the foolish and degenerate among us are willing to open the portals on their behalf, whether for motives of power or of vain vanity - then there will tentacles, lots of tentacles, and rats, and noisome smells at once both repugnant and repellent, and unheard sounds that can never be heard nor described so as to be intelligible to the pitifully limited faculties of our all-too-human minds, and there will be more tentacles.

Such is my warning to you, my dear and unwittingly doomed fellow travellers: there are people who like Lovecraft's brand of horror, and you might know one.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

A few decades ago I read this book hot on the heels of reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  I did it a great disservice by comparing the two.  At the time Dracula seemed a bit cheap by comparison: the psychology was shallower, and the good guys were too good and all seemed stamped from the same mould.  I dismissed it as a lesser work; however, upon re-reading, I can see more clearly the merits of Stoker's novel.

The story of Dracula is presented to the reader in the form of extracts from various diaries, journals, letters, telegrams and newspaper clippings.  This allows us to see the story from multiple points of view, and Stoker does an admirable job of blending direct observation, internal dialogue and reported speech so that the narration remains fresh and lively throughout what is a long novel.

Of course, the genre is horror; and as willing participants in the game, we are going to allow Stoker to scare us.  But how does he go about his task?  He introduces us to one of the heroes, Jonathan Harker, and through him we soon meet the monster Count Dracula.   The Count is hospitable, thoughtful and erudite; however, the scenario "reeks of wrongness" (thank you, Diana Wynne Jones for giving the world that phrase).  By degrees, Harker's situation descends into a nightmare.  

It is notable that things are never so nightmarish than when the Count is absent and is only alluded to or is only seen from afar, and that is about all we get of him for most of the book after the first few chapters.  But it works, and it does intensify the horror.  Tolkien used the same device: Sauron is never seen (except as a distant, roving eye) and is never heard (except in one case of reported speech), and yet the horror of his threat is almost always present.

Stoker, it seems, is good at the bad guys and bad at the good guys.  The Count and the lunatic Renfield are memorable villains.  Mr & Mrs Harker, Dr Seward, et al. are quite unmemorable and hardly distinguishable in their thoughts and sentiments.  Only the quirky and indefatigable Van Helsing rises above the blandness of his companions (but only just).  The point, I think, is that we are to insert ourselves into the places of the good guys at each change of perspective so that we, too, can feel the full impact of the horror that besets them.  Too much eccentricity on the part of the character may mean a loss of empathy on our part.  Still, a bit more delineation would have been nice.

I am very glad to have read this book again.  Despite my familiarity with the story, Stoker was able to touch my sense of horror and set it humming.