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Loading... Zone One (2011)by Colson Whitehead
This was just such a mess. I suppose you could argue that the character is living a nightmare and therefore his train of thought is going to be chaotic, but this book just drove me nuts. It jumped around all over the place - a couple of times I thought perhaps pages were out of order or I missed a page/paragraph, but it never turned out to be so. Two paragraphs later I would figure out "Oh, this is another flashback - or is it? Wait, what?". I would have stopped reading except that it was such a train wreck and I couldn't reconcile that with all the good reviews. At the half-way point I started skimming & couldn't wait for it to be over with. It's too bad because I was interested in the plot & it started off well. (  ) pixiestyx77 | Apr 26, 2013 |  I loved THE INTUITIONIST and very much liked JOHN HENRY DAYS, so I picked this book up even though I don't love zombie stories or horror in general. And, unsurprisingly, I found lovely writing, smart observations, and a high gross-out factor. I ended up skimming a lot of this book because I just really don't like horror, but I think if you're interested in zombies, this is probably one of the best zombie books out there--just not my jam. (  ) anderlawlor | Apr 9, 2013 | After reading this article in the New York Times, I had to try reading this. I mean, I love genre fiction and I have a degree in English Literature, so you'd better hope I've got the intellectual side down since that's about all my degree seems to be good for demonstrating... Surely I'd get the best of both worlds out of this. And, you know, apparently that degree doesn't say a damn thing, because I just found Zone One boring. I read the first twenty-five pages rather hopefully; something about the prose style did sweep me up and keep me turning pages. But as I got further into the book and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and nothing happened, I began to lose my patience. Literary fiction is great, even when it spools out slowly -- Kazuo Ishiguro's work is slow and good, in that way -- but this just bored me. I felt nothing about the words on the page but apathy. The back promises a 'punchy cocktail of horror, comedy and social critique', but I didn't really find anything but the latter, and I'd heard all that before... This bit from the article sums it up all too well: A plot summary is impossible: there isn’t a plot. To make matters worse, the protagonist is a laconic introvert of self-avowed mediocrity. The only ostensibly interesting things about him are his nickname, Mark Spitz (the explanation for which is withheld so long that the payoff stakes rise perilously high), his tendency to hallucinate falling ash and his ominous flirtation with the mysterious “forbidden thought.” Spitz is a sweeper and, for the novel’s three-day, flashback-filled present, our guide to the new (and hence the old) reality. And then the bits of the article about the supposed pay-off never -- for me, anyway -- materialised. (  ) shanaqui | Apr 9, 2013 | Rating: 4 of 5 Zone One is a perfect example of "literary horror." I love stories that dig under the surface of horrific events, like a zombie apocalypse, to show me not just the physicality (running for their life) of the situation but also the emotionality (why they're running, what they're really running from, and so forth) by way of meticulously selected words and expertly crafted sentences. If you only read zombie or apocalypse books for the fast-paced plot and abundant gore, you probably won't enjoy this book. If you're easily bored by literary fiction because of its "complicated" style and/or slow-moving or nonexistent plot, you should probably skip this book. If you loathe expanding your vocabulary (aka having to look up the meaning of a word) whilst reading, definitely choose something else. If, like me, you relish the [sometimes elusive] hybrid known as literary horror, then you may want to give this book a chance. If you're not used to prose of this caliber, the first 40 to 50 pages may require some patience, but it's worth it. Whitehead writes beautifully (arguably too much so at times), and I found myself wanting to highlight sentence after sentence, yet I wouldn't put the book down in order to grab a notebook and pen. I should warn you, though: its characters' examination of humanity was a dark one, both before and after the zombies. My biggest complaint: I wish Mark Spitz could've been as tenacious as Temple in The Reapers Are the Angels (Alden Bell) or as driven as the Man in The Road (Cormac McCarthy). But perhaps Mark's mediocrity was the point. Something to ponder, I suppose. (  ) flying_monkeys | Apr 9, 2013 | Halfway through the book, I honestly did not care if anyone survived. So, I put the book down. (First book I've quit in 2 years!) Okay, I'm not a big zombie fan in the least, but I had read someone where that something like, "If you want a smart, intelligent zombie book, this is the one to read." I figured what the heck, I'd give it a try. In terms of the zombies, nothing new from the 1970's. The zombies are dead and want to kill people. In terms of the writing, at first I liked it because the prose seemed to be heading somewhere. After a 100 pages, I realized it was heading nowhere and going very slowly. The writing had become more pretentious and annoying. The characters were flat without much appeal to them. And if there was a plot, I missed it. I was extremely disappointed in the book and the writing. (  ) LMHTWB | Apr 7, 2013 | no reviews | add a review
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RatingAverage: (3.37)
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Wikipedia in English
The phrase “the thinking person’s [something]” may be terminally overused, but surely that’s what Colson Whitehead has accomplished in Zone One--a savvy zombie classic, the best addition to the genre since George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.
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