Zed (Paperback)

by Elizabeth McClung (Author)
Key Phrases: stairwell door, canned ham, Bottomless Joe, Mistress Anna, Bucket Charlie (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Zed is a tale to be pondered by all those who wield power over the vulnerable. McCLung's plot twists and images wrestle the emotions before the intellect can pin them down, but when her message at last emerges from the blood and bedlam the effect is devasting: Terror begins at home. Then it grows.
—The Globe and Mail (Globe & Mail )

One of the best books of 2006: a piercent lament for all kids who are ill-used by their keepers. One of the top 100 books of 2006.
—The Globe and Mail (Globe and Mail )

The combination of near future dystopia and murder mystery means that one is drawn relentlessly along toward a conclusion which, even if it doesn't seem completely justified, is fitting for such a vivid and explosive book.
—Monday Magazine (Monday Magazine )

A humorous, but disturbing read.
—The Vancouver Sun (The Vancouver Sun )

A masterfully written first novel.... Zed, both the book and protagonist, is truly original ... the definition of provocative, if you can handle it.
—Zoe Whittall, NOW Magazine (Zoe Whittall Now Magazine )

A hellishly engaging novel ... Zed not only merits cinematic interpretation, it demands it.
—Rain Taxi (Rod Smith Rain Taxi review of )

Her debut novel Zed doesn’t seem to be classified as a "horror" but holy crow, this book sufficiently filled my horrific quota. A NOW review tweaked my interest on this one and I wasn’t disappointed. Despite being written from the point of view of a 12 year old girl, Zed, this book is most definitely not for kids. Heck, this book is not for most adults. Murder, rape, addiction, sociopaths ... all that and more, navigated by young Zed within the confines of an inner city project. Zed is appalling yet believable. I can't wait for Ms. McClung's next book!
—CBC Radio (CBC Radio )

McClung's dark, wicked sense of humor shows through as she chronicles Zed's profoundly disturbing exploits. Shocking and complete with alarming psychological insights, Zedis like nothing you've read before.
—Pages magazine (Pages magazine )

Zed is the kind of work about which the adjective 'disturbing' usually applies. That's really an understatement.... It is a riveting, sometimes scary work.... Zed is laced with the kind of wit that could take the rust off your handlebars.
—University of Toronto Quarterly (University of Toronto Quarterly )

Product Description
Zed is having a bad day. She’s 12 and there’s someone around who’s killing kids,which she doesn’t have time for. Already today, she’s knifed a rapist, traded with half the drunks and addicts in town, talked to the dead, bargained with a sociopath, and she hasn’t even left the building. Welcome to The Tower, an urban development project no city wants to lay claim to: a place to steer clear of if at all possible, but if you can’t, you’ll fit right in. This vivid, claustrophobic novel is about madness, survival, and crumbling institutions, in the spirit of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise or Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press (May 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551521970
• ISBN-13: 978-1551521978
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,737,518 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like nothing else I have ever read, June 6, 2006

By	Katherine (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

The book is very simple: there is a girl and she wants to live. The book is very complex: The Tower is a world, a philosophy course and a study of human interaction. The characters are amazing and outragous in the way people become in times of desperation, the situation is desperate and the calm voice in it all is a 12 year old girl who works endlessly on how to end the day alive. It reads like it is written from the war-battered cities dotted around the world, but is instead a special corner we choose to ignore in our own cities: New York, LA, Chicago, Tornoto, Vancouver, London, Liverpool, Paris

If you like thrillers, I recommend this book. If you like literature, I recommend this book. If you like being carried along in a story to a place you never knew existed, to be returned, shaking but safe, back to your bedroom, then I recommend this book. If you want to know what russian roulette is like without having someone clean your brains off the wall, I recommend this book.

This book will make you feel things, and that's rare. It doesn't cajole you or make you misty eyed, but gives you the charge of a junkie, covered in oozing infected pus, pawing at you, demanding attention. Like it or not, you will feel things, you will care about Zed, even as you must wait, powerless to help her. If you think of yourself as a reader, maybe you think you've seen it all. Then read this.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Best Debut Novel in YEARS", March 30, 2007

By	Cliff Burns (Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Elizabeth McClung's ZED is a marvel. For a debut novel it is astonishingly assured and competent. Perhaps the best first novel I have read since Iain Banks' THE WASP FACTORY. Too much of Canadian fiction is tired, mannered and moribund. ZED is years beyond the usual Can-Lit tapioca that passes for our national literature. Her 13-year old protagonist is tough, likable, a survivor in a world full of adult monsters. Set almost entirely within the confines of an unnamed apartment building in an unnamed city, ZED is claustrophobic, terrifying and, gulp, at times very, very funny. Filled with fascinating characterizations and unforgettable imagery. Published by a small press on Canada's West Coast but I predict there are bigger things ahead for Ms. McClung. She has, as they say, all the right stuff.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So much potential..., January 5, 2007

By	Sherry Chiger "schiger" (New Rochelle, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wanted to like--no, love--this book. The subject matter--a 12-year-old surviving in a not-so-far-fretched dystopian--is exciting and potentially unnerving; much of the writing is tersely evocative and dryly humorous. But there's something self-indulgent about many of the writer's choices, from plotting to description to character development.
Take the title character, Zed. Tough, orphaned, living by her wits, Zed has numerous predecessors in literature (Pippi Longstocking, Dido Twite, Deenie Gauthier, to name just three). But whereas those characters were all given a backstory to help explain in part what makes them tick, author McClung doesn't feel the need to do that with Zed. We have no idea how she ended up in the Bosch-like nightmare of a tower block that is her home, how she learned to read somewhat, why Luc (the evil genius-cum-Danny Zuko of the building) is so avuncular toward her for most of the book, and how she became the scrounger that she is. We're expected to take McClung's word for all of this, which makes it tough to care too deeply about Zed.
McClung also seems to have decided that there was no need to describe visuals, though she's more generous when it comes to describing odors. Is there a reason we don't know what Zed or Luc look like?
Then there are the plot points and details that aren't true to even the fictional reality. Early on Zed is described as looking younger than 12, largely because she doesn't get three square meals a day. How, then, does she muster up the strength to take down bulky grown men hired as bodyguards/bruisers, let alone survive some brutal torture?
This book angered me in a way few books have--but not because of the subject matter. It angered me because McClung is clearly a talent writer with a fierce imagination, but lax editing (or a lack of an editor altogether) resulted in her strengths being obscured by ther weaknesses.