‘Zombies for Zombies: Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead’ – David P. Murphy (Sourcebooks Inc)

Now here’s a book that I’ve been planning to write about for the last couple of weeks but somehow never got round to. Life has a habit of getting in the way of my plans, even with zombie books (strange but true). Like my rotting heroes though, I got there in the end. If there’s one thing you can learn from zombies it’s the value of just putting one foot in front of the other; you’ll get there in the end...

What would you do if you were bitten by a zombie? Quickly chop the offending limb off? Put a bullet through your head while you still have any say in the matter? I’d probably take the easy way out; become a zombie and let someone else shoot me in the head. It’s not as if I’d know what was going on...
All this is about to change though as David P. Murphy shows us that there is life after undeath. Your body may well be falling apart but there’s still every chance that you can keep your mind in one piece (albeit rotting from the inside out) and live a normal life. Well, I say ‘normal’...

I’m one of those people who read the ‘Idiot’s Guide’ books in the shops when I think no-one else is watching me (I just don’t want to admit that I cannot change a light bulb, it’s tricky!) There was no danger of that happening with this book though; everyone needs to be prepared for the inevitable zombie apocalypse and I’ll do my part to make people aware of this imminent threat! :o)
It was a bit of a shame then that the book left me ever so slightly cold...

Murphy plays things for laughs here and this isn’t surprising when you consider the subject matter. A self help book for people who are about to become zombies can’t be anything else other than comedic! When Murphy hits the spot you’re holding a very funny book indeed, certainly one that had me laughing out loud. The ’14 Habits of Highly Effective Zombies’ was a good source of chuckles as was ‘Who Moved My Brains’; lots of positive reinforcement about why being bitten isn’t the end of the world. I couldn’t help but laugh because... well, it totally is the end of the world for everyone (the bitten and those who are still trying to survive). The blatant spin, in the face of the apocalypse, bounces nicely off the underlying subject matter and what you get is a quirky and fun piece that will make you smile at the very least.

I couldn’t help thinking though that the joke could only go so far and in a book this size (two hundred and thirty nine pages) the joke would be pushed to the point where it stopped being funny. It might work for other people but I was left thinking that ‘Zombies for Zombies’ might have worked better as a pamphlet (or a web page online) rather than a whole book.
Sections like ‘Recipes!’ are one joke that’s needlessly repeated until the effect is lost. We know what zombies like to eat; we don’t like to be told over and over again. Television schedules for zombies might well be a Romero style comment on TV watchers but, again, it’s another joke that’s stretched out until it’s not funny. Dance lessons for zombies would work as a visual joke but you don’t really get to see on the written page. As far as zombie sex goes... Suffice it to say that this section didn’t even make me crack a smile. It felt like Murphy spent too much time trying to justify the idea that zombies could have sex; if you have to justify something to that extent then the end result isn’t going to be funny at all.

What I did get a lot out of though was the darker currents that ran beneath the main concept. Things aren’t as nice out there as they would have you believe and the zombie lifestyle isn’t so idyllic either... This is what kept me reading, an idea that I think could have worked better than what Murphy chose to focus on...

Humour is a funny thing (Pun? No...) and different people find different stuff funny. You might laugh your way through the whole book but I... didn’t. There are some interesting ideas behind ‘Zombies for Zombies’ but it didn’t quite do it for this reader...

Six and a Quarter out of Ten.