My First Zombie Book

Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009). ISBN 978-1-84737-762-3, £14.99 (pbk)

Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection is set in the near future (early 2012), which means that it won’t be long before it is set in the near past. This, along with the fact that it makes no attempt to disguise its contents, means that it must be approached with our disbelief securely suspended. Suspended by the ropes of heavy-duty dramatic irony. Ropes supplied by the fact that the written narrative contains few if any surprises for the reader, and also by the almost interminably long time it takes for pennies to drop in the mind of Dr Robert Twombly (diarist/narrator).

As such, Chris Lane and Don Roff’s book is an escapist piece of writing that celebrates all the zombie goodness that surrounds us in popular culture at the moment. One does not feel excluded or intimidated by this book. It is not exclusively for ‘comic book geeks’ or ‘zombie geeks’, and I suspect that people who are deeply into the zombie (sub-)genre may well be turned off by such an accessible work. This is a mainstream book, a coffee-table book, a book for the toilet-side, an ideal Christmas present, the sort of book you’ll pick up waiting in line at the bookstore, and reads, at times, like a beginner’s guide to zombies.

The text separated from the images contains nothing that hasn’t been successfully satirized in ‘Shaun of the Dead’. When the text is paired, however, with the gruesomely detailed illustrations, ample motivation is provided to keep reading. Since the illustrations provide the gems of this work, and because of this the writing must be congratulated for not absorbing us wholly. If it did, it would be to the detriment of the illustrations and the effect of the book as a whole.

To conclude, if you find yourself in possession of this book, I would recommend the following: a beamed country cottage on a blustery day with an inglenook fireplace, where you can stretch out on a sofa with a glass of red wine in front of a log fire while someone else cooks a roast lunch and you turn the thick glossy pages. In this way you can enjoy the book for what it is: an inessential luxury with an inconsequential storyline; possible to appreciate for its sheer loveliness, and as a reminder that there are still books that are so inseparably intertwined with the medium of print.