Jan 19 - Jan 24, 2012
Zone One
Colson Whitehead
Horror
Published 2011
259 pages
8/10
The Zombie Plague has ripped through the nation, but the survivors are beginning to pick up the pieces; a tentative government has been established, rules are being put into place, and trained teams of volunteers are clearing out the undead, section by section. As Mark Spitz exterminates the stragglers, the horror of the past and the horror of the present create a pervasive static trauma, but he's well prepared when the shit REALLY hits the fan...
I don't know how to feel about Zone One; it's a unique take on the zombie novel, terrifically intellectual and quite unlike anything I've read before.
This is the first zombie novel I've read that focuses on the AFTERMATH of the living dead apocalypse - the slow treacherous rebuilding of society. Truthfully, that's why I picked it up in the first place; who doesn't want to prepare themselves for their own eventual survival after the escape, the slaughter, and the small triumphs?
The fact that the author also brought up the mental and emotional effects of facing a zombie apocalypse was terrifically thoughtful and insightful. Sure, other books have touched on the few crazies this or that character may have come across, but I kind of assume that ANY survivor would be a few cheese slices short of their tray of crackers after outrunning, outmaneuvering, and out-killing the living dead... and the living. If you catch my drift. Even our protagonist of Zone One was a leetle beet weeird and tough to follow at times, though this is chalked up to the trauma, and expertly so.
But you know what else was hard to understand? THE ENTIRE BOOK.
Besides the fact that we zoned in and out of flashbacks without warning, and besides the fact that the protagonist did a fuck of a lot of thinking in his incredibly disjointed manner, and besides the fact that I needed my dictionary every page or so, it was just too... intellectual. I mean, instead of splattering rotting brains to smithereens and rescuing enclaved survivors (we did do a little of that, but not much) we spent a lot of time in the head of Mark Spitz, with his incredibly intelligent (but incredibly obtuse) thoughts and feelings.
This is a thinking man's zombie novel, but how many thinking men put down their Chaucer and pick up a contemporary undead horror book instead? If I wanted to be entertained by thinking, I'd use my own freaky brain (or read an Oprah book) instead. I read to escape the doldrums of my reality, not to step into the doldrums of someone else's.
So while it was good, and different, it's not what I expected or particularly in a zombie book. But you can't argue with great writing, either.
Zone One
Colson Whitehead
Horror
Published 2011
259 pages
8/10
The Zombie Plague has ripped through the nation, but the survivors are beginning to pick up the pieces; a tentative government has been established, rules are being put into place, and trained teams of volunteers are clearing out the undead, section by section. As Mark Spitz exterminates the stragglers, the horror of the past and the horror of the present create a pervasive static trauma, but he's well prepared when the shit REALLY hits the fan...
I don't know how to feel about Zone One; it's a unique take on the zombie novel, terrifically intellectual and quite unlike anything I've read before.
This is the first zombie novel I've read that focuses on the AFTERMATH of the living dead apocalypse - the slow treacherous rebuilding of society. Truthfully, that's why I picked it up in the first place; who doesn't want to prepare themselves for their own eventual survival after the escape, the slaughter, and the small triumphs?
The fact that the author also brought up the mental and emotional effects of facing a zombie apocalypse was terrifically thoughtful and insightful. Sure, other books have touched on the few crazies this or that character may have come across, but I kind of assume that ANY survivor would be a few cheese slices short of their tray of crackers after outrunning, outmaneuvering, and out-killing the living dead... and the living. If you catch my drift. Even our protagonist of Zone One was a leetle beet weeird and tough to follow at times, though this is chalked up to the trauma, and expertly so.
But you know what else was hard to understand? THE ENTIRE BOOK.
Besides the fact that we zoned in and out of flashbacks without warning, and besides the fact that the protagonist did a fuck of a lot of thinking in his incredibly disjointed manner, and besides the fact that I needed my dictionary every page or so, it was just too... intellectual. I mean, instead of splattering rotting brains to smithereens and rescuing enclaved survivors (we did do a little of that, but not much) we spent a lot of time in the head of Mark Spitz, with his incredibly intelligent (but incredibly obtuse) thoughts and feelings.
This is a thinking man's zombie novel, but how many thinking men put down their Chaucer and pick up a contemporary undead horror book instead? If I wanted to be entertained by thinking, I'd use my own freaky brain (or read an Oprah book) instead. I read to escape the doldrums of my reality, not to step into the doldrums of someone else's.
So while it was good, and different, it's not what I expected or particularly in a zombie book. But you can't argue with great writing, either.
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