Review of Tim Long’s Zombie-Wilson Diaries

“My Girlfriend is a Zombie”

…and thus we set the tone for this intimate look at a man and his undead island-mate.

The Zombie Wilson Diaries plays on the castaway scenario replacing the volleyball named Wilson from the Tom Hanks film with a zombie girl who is quite a bit more animated and a whole lot more bitey than a ball with a bloody hand print for a face. Our nameless narrator begins his diary while on a business trip to the islands, which turns into a plane crash which lands him on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean with one of the other passengers, who apparently floated up to the island alive, just like him, but made the unfortunate decision to eat some exotic berries that have turned her from a hottie model type into a rottie gooey type. But fear not, our narrator decides to take her under his wing instead of bashing her skull in with a big rock because she keeps him company on a island lacking in others to socially interact with. Oh, we do get the occasional interloper, like our fair lady’s dead rotting hubby and a few natives who have canoed over from another island, but for the most part, this tale of a fateful trip is all about a man and his zombie.

A nice touch with this book is the appearance of handwritten text and the hand scrawled stick drawings that the narrator puts at the front of each chapter, which added to the personal diary feel of this story.

It is an intriguing relationship that this deluded and desperate man has with a creature that I found hard to define as far as what her role was. Each chapter starts with “My girlfriend…” but it becomes clear that the zombie in this story plays multiple parts, and girlfriend, it seems, is probably the least of them. Desperate for companionship, it is almost as if she is his pet or willful child, as he takes care of her and keeps her from getting into trouble, while at the same time she snaps at him and generally acts like a brat, but there are moments when it seems that his girl, undead Friday, seems to recognize and even relies on him, especially when there are thunderstorms and undead sharks trying to snap her in half.

The comedy here is dark and should be appreciated by a fan of the zombie genre for certain, as well as those who like a bit of a twisted tale in general. The self-induced torture that this castaway goes through as he debates, on a daily basis, whether it would just be better to kill this creature even though she provides him with a shred of human contact, is a wickedly humorous conflict. I’m not really sure whether I liked this guy or I just wanted to smack some sense into him, but I know one thing for sure, this book was an entertaining journey into the surreal.

The Zombie-Wilson Diaries can be found on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Wilson-Diaries-Timothy-W-Long/dp/1450542565/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274809398&sr=1-1