Customer Reviews

Zone One: A Novel

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(36)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

If like me you were excited to hear that a well-respected, intellectual author has ventured into the apocalypse genre, I should warn you, Zone One is not The Road (Oprah's Book Club). The Road had characters and a relationship that you could connect to and an engaging plot. Zone One has none of that. It has a main character whose most notable feature is his mediocrity, a few moments of mild suspense, and an unbearably tedious pace.

It seems that the reviews for this book are distinctly divided. Fans of the zombie/apocalypse genre have offered some pretty scathing reviews and low ratings. Fans of "literary fiction" are giving it a bit more credit. I'm generally more aligned with the literary fiction readers, but I think the zombie fans have some legitimate criticisms.

The main criticism against this book seems to be the lack of plot, and I can't disagree. A lot of the book is mildly amusing; it's just not very compelling. Even the (rare) engaging passages are frequently interrupted by reflections about the past, which significantly slow the pace. It took me about three time as long as it should have to finish the book, because I literally fell asleep within a few pages nearly every time I picked it up.

Although there's little plot, the book's main character is somewhat interesting. He's survived a long time since the "Last Night." His survival, though, is not due to his courage, strength, or cleverness. He's completely average with the exception of his cockroach-like survival instinct. Although readers are unlikely to fall in love with Mark Spitz, he provides an amusing lens for this story.

Did I like this book? Yes, actually. Instead of splatter, gore and terror, the author chose to think out (which seems to trouble some reviewers no end) what it would be like to try to live within a collapsed society, with a collapsed psyche and collapsed dreams. Instead of inventing heroic and invincible characters to slash and crash their way through hopeless situations, Whitehead's characters, each one flawed and vulnerable, bumble and stumble their way to another day of survival, which is how most real human beings are, after all. The idea of this zombie book was not to be like the other ones, but to work out daily life in which all norms have been shattered, and in which the common and regular are - then as now - the pawns of the great and mighty.

That said, Whitehead is this book's worst enemy. He takes every opportunity to show off his inventiveness, preen his considerable literary plumage and display his intimate acquaintance with the thesaurus. In playing with the narrative thread and timeline, sometimes just because he can, he adds unnecessary stress to what is not a terribly sturdy plot in the first place. Perhaps as he matures, he will write to make the story the thing instead of himself. If this book had 35% less exhibitionism and 30% more plot, it could have been a real showpiece. Instead, it is a pleasant, if sometimes tedious diversion written by an obviously talented, but all-too-self-indulgent author.

Where to begin? I suppose I should start by saying that while I come from that tribe of geeks that love all things zombie-related (films, comics, videogames, boardgames, etc.), I ran out of enthusiasm for the genre a few years ago. The template for the zombie story is just too confining, there's not that much new or different to be done with it. However, despite this weariness for the genre, I immediately picked this up because it was a Colson Whitehead book. He's one of the few authors whom I will actually rush out to buy (others include Michael Chabon, Nick Hornby, and George Pelecanos, just to name a few -- Jonathan Lethem used to be on the list, but no longer). That said, my experience with his books has been a slow slide of diminishing returns: I loved (and still love) his debut The Intuitionist, his second book (John Henry Days) is flawed but still fully engaging, the third book (Apex Hides the Hurt) felt like a slight trifle, and his most recent book (Sag Harbor) was just too personal for me to connect with. However, this is an excellent book in which Whitehead combines his controlled freestyling prose with the unforgiving, bleak tone of Cormac McCarthy's The Road or No Country for Old Men, in order to document the downfall of his beloved Manhattan, and indeed, the American empire. Many people (including the publicist who wrote the back cover copy) seem to be mistakenly using the word "satire" to describe the book -- it's not a satire, it's a scathing, raging critique of modern America.

Don't pick this up expecting a literary "take" on the zombie action thriller, a few scenes aside, there isn't much action. The bulk of the book takes place inside the protagonist's head, as he trudges around a mostly-safe part of Manhattan as part of a three-person militia unit "sweeping" the blocks for stray zombies the Marines missed when they secured this part of the island. As they clear Manhattan for the impending resettlement, he mentally documents the pre-"Last Night" world and its ridiculous concerns, ranging from consumer items to real estate to sitcoms, and so on. There are plenty of flashbacks to his year on the run in the wilderness, and we get plenty of stories from other characters about where they were when it all came crashing down. These provide the necessary "what would I do" moments which are integral to the zombie genre (and many other horror genres for that matter), but make no mistake, this book is only headed to one place. There's only three ways a zombie story can end, good, bad, or setup for the sequel, and I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that Whitehead is not interested in building any suspense, because every so often he'll slip in a direct statement that tells you it's not going to end well. The book is told from the perspective of a Sunday, and the "action" mainly unfolds over the previous two days, with lots of flashbacks to earlier times. I suppose this flashback within a flashback chronology might be confusing to some people, but I never had a problem with it.

It's nothing new to use genre forms to tell allegorical tales, and American materialism has been skewered by the zombie-maestro himself, George Romero, in Dawn of the Dead. But the sheer skill at work here makes this well worth reading, whether you're a zombie enthusiast, a fan of Whitehead's, or just a lover of interesting fiction.

Clearly this novel was an attempt at literary fiction but reads more like an assignment in an undergrad creative writing class. Dense prose that reads like someone just discovered how to use a thesaurus for the first time at the expense of anything interesting. If Karl Marx wrote a zombie novel in the style of Ayn Rand, it might look something like this.

I had high expectations for this novel but was bored to tears and couldn't make it past the first 100 pages. Frankly, this book is not for fans of zombie OR literary fiction.

I still have not finished this book. I have had it for over 4 months. It is extremely boring as well as confusing. The reader cannot tell at times if the main character is in the present time, a flashback, or some drawn out metaphor. Very disappointed. The writer literally has to make a metaphor for nearly everything in the book, I am starting to think he needed to make the book longer so that's what he did in order to turn this into a novel and not a short story, the book after all only takes place over a 3 day period......feels more like 3 decades.

The reviews I was reading about this book in all the magazines I regularly subscribe to had me salivating for the book. I bought it on pre-order, which I've never done in all my years of book-buying. Wow. I wish I could return it. It was THAT uninteresting to me.

About 30% of the way into the book, I realized, hmmm... I haven't really picked up the slightest sense of a plot, nor any kind of sense of where the narrative is going. I just kept reading description after description. What little "motion" the book had was crushed up against long expository blocks of writing.

Looking at all the reviews, there have been quite a spread of opinions. One three-star called the book "tedious." There is NO better word to describe this book.

I'm a published author (of nonfiction) so I know that crappy book reviews suck. I've had my share. But honestly? I'm writing this for the readers. I would NOT recommend this book to anyone who expects an entertaining and thought-provoking read. But then again, I only got about 45% of the way through the book before I gave up.

Zone One bats clean-up after Sean of the Dead in the ironic zombie literature line-up. Where Sean wanted to show how easy and delightful it is to have fun with this seemingly essential genre, Colson Whitehead's novel endeavors to explore the materialistic aspect of humans losing their humanity. Wandering through an empty city in Zone One, Whitehead forces us to stop and look at every little organic bath product and focus-grouped chain restaurant in confessional detail as Mark Spitz, the main zombie-hunting character, unpacks the memories around each. Although his wry dismissal of every little unnecessary object becomes excruciating at some points, it's necessary that we see it all in order to take in the magnitude (be it very large or very small) of what can be lost in the collapse of civilization.

Whitehead pulls off a neat trick by making the book third person, but then sticking very close to his protagonist's thoughts on the sad vapidity of our pre-undead lives, in order to make sure we don't dismiss Spitz's cynicism as a simple heroic outlier. It comes with the ultimate insistance that whatever we don't set aside to survive will be set aside for us: the end is nigh, say Starbuck's social media campaigns. Colson Whitehead believes the only end of the story is bad: what we don't know is whether he's talking about Mark's, or ours.

Coleson Whitehead presents a fantastic, original twist on a frequently warmed-over genre by introducing "stragglers", zombies who are reanimated only to prefer being lost in a moment from their lives over the taste of flesh.

Unfortunately, Coleson's idea is bogged down by a plot that moves underwater for the first 100 pages and gets trapped in its own poor structure. The concept of a chapterless novel to create flow is hardly unheard of, but clear breaks in idea are necessary to keep the reader engaged and aware of where the narrative is moving next.

Coleson's writing seems to point to him not trusting the reader to understand his already sometimes heavy-handed tropes, quite literally pointing out what should be light touches in cases where he writes "...effected by his PASD. His Past." I think most readers had gotten than well before the 250th page.

Ultimately, Coleson's novel follows the theme of his own novel, listlessly shuffling toward a conclusion, using caricature to mask monstrosities instead of living one's own life to its fullest.

Colson Whitehead is a superb writer. Each of his books (with the arguable exception of Sag Harbor) relies on an unusual situation presented in a non-straightforward way. He packs a lot into his prose, too, and has a fine imagination.

What we have here is not a plot-driven zombie apocalypse novel. In fact, this thing has very little plot. We follow the viewpoint character (I can hardly call him a protagonist) through three days spent cleaning up lower Manhattan. He wanders around with his team taking care of two types of zombies, and remembering the immediate past in a set of interlocking flashbacks. Then everything collapses in a few pages at the end. Too bad for Manhattan.

The good: it's Colson Whitehead and his silver tongue and descriptive magic. His version of the zombie plague and the apocalypse has some unusual and interesting components - not just zombies with killing on their minds. He manages to get across the metaphoric points pretty well - who can you trust, what is the role of the government, what makes us let certain other people into our group and others not. He does a good job slowly revealing the conditions of the apocalyptic world. And in a few places it's sort of funny.

The bad: there's really no plot, though there is plenty of to-ing and fro-ing action and some nicely violent killing. It's sometimes hard to follow what's happening. The flashbacks are a bit too convoluted for me.
If you're expecting another plague-of-zombies high-action fast-moving apocalypse story, look elsewhere. You'll probably think this book is pretentious and dull.

If you love Colson Whitehead but can't stomach violence, stay away.

But if you are willing to go along with him for the sake of the writing and for the sake of his fertile imagination, try this one out. Just lower your expectations a bit.

I read about 2/3 of the book and gave up, something I have hardly ever done. I found it tedious, disjointed and boring. A literary professor might grade it well for technicality but as a lover of a good story (regardless of the genre and or literary skills or shortcomings of the author) I was disappointed. I only looked at this book because of a rave review I noticed in the Sunday Paper, which I should have ignored as is my usual instinct (ignoring critics), but wait, what does that say about what I've said here?

Get the sample and make up your own mind, just be warned, the rest of the book follows the same vein.