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Loading... Zombie (1995)by Joyce Carol Oates (Author)
  
1990s (90) Bram Stoker Award (29) No current Talk conversations about this book.  bostonwendym | Mar 3, 2016 |  A gay serial killer who is obsessed with finding a boy he can lobotomize and turn into his own personal zombie. I figured it would be grim but it was actually just gross and pointless. One of those non-endings that infuriates me didn't help. I would advise looking for something else in the serial killer genre and skipping this one. (  ) grammarchick | Jan 5, 2016 | JCO gets into the mind of a serial killer? Who knew? There is no other view point in this terrifying study of murder, torture and love. Yes, love. that deranged mind was looking for a Zombie to love him. Ms.Oates is such a versatile writer, not many could pull this off. Yet she does with quite the flair for the macabre. At times i wanted to put the book down and could not. Quite a story. (  ) sogamonk | Apr 7, 2015 | A gritty, disturbing portrayal of a serial killer and rapist, this short novel takes the form of journal writings of Quentin P, a registered sex offender on parole. Joyce Carol Oates is an excellent story-teller, and she varies her writing style to suit the story she is telling -- in this case, with great success. (  ) LynnB | Dec 31, 2014 | This book makes me want to read everything Joyce Carol Oates has ever written. The style of writing fits so well with the story and main character, it was scary. Let's just say that I wouldn't want to meet Quintin but what if I have? What if it's someone I know? Oates made this character so believable it sent chills down my spine. Her writing is poetic and realistic at the same time. I can't wait to read more of her writing and will be running back to the library to pick up whatever I can find. (  ) yougotamber | Aug 22, 2014 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0452275008, Paperback)A hero who gets into the mind of a serial killer is a fixture of television crime shows, but such stories are usually disappointing, because the viewer knows it's just a gimmick. Not so with this unusual little novel, which The New York Times called a "note-perfect, horror-comic ventriloquization of a half-bright, infantile serial killer." Joyce Carol Oates has so convincingly written through the voice of a killer, you will feel nervous while reading at how familiar, how human, he is. Part of how she achieves the effect is through sparing use of bizarre capitalization (e.g., "MOON" and "FRAGMENT") and crude drawings done with a felt-tip pen. But the language is what makes it come alive, as in such weird statements as "My whole body is a numb tongue." This book was winner of the 1996 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel.(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:17:11 -0400) Oates's ostensible diary of the paroled sex offender Quentin P. provides a psychologically astute portrait of the way cold calculation and dark obsession combine in a serial killer to make him both horrifyingly successful and maddeningly elusive. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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He is a problem for his professor father and his loving mother, though of course they do not believe the charge of sexual molestation of a minor that got him in that bit of trouble.
He is a challenge for his court-appointed psychiatrist, who nonetheless is encouraged by the increasingly affirmative quality of his dreams and his openness in discussing them.
He is a thoroughly sweet young man for his wealthy grandmother, who gives him more and more, and can deny him less and less.
He is the most believable and thoroughly terrifying sexual psychopath and killer ever to be brought to life in fiction, as Joyce Carol Oates achieves her boldest and most brilliant triumph yet—a dazzling work of art that extends the borders of the novel into the darkest heart of truth.
What Joyce Carol Oates has done is not write about madness but write in the voice and the logic of madness itself. The horror of the novel is in the very absence of horror, as we enter the mind of a murderer who has not a trace of what we like to call conscience as he depicts the people he manipulates and the sexual savagery he perpetrates upon his victims. The terror of the novel is not that Quentin P. is so strange to us but that he is so fearfully familiar as he describes his carnal crimes with the innocent zest of delightful pleasures fondly recalled. His is a world in which he is an eternal outsider, playing a game of survival, living on his wits and wiles among strangers who only want to look the other way.