Rate this book

Zone One (2011)

by Colson Whitehead(Favorite Author)

3.25 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0385528078 (ISBN13: 9780385528078)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Doubleday

review 1: This is my favorite sort of book. Colson Whitehead gives us the definitive literary zombie apocalypse, weaving a macabre fairy tale that thrills with story even as it asks larger questions. What is important to us? With whom do we share our truths? With what final pose will we memorialize our life, and in what place? Zone One beats out the bullet-into-skull percussion zombie fetishists crave, but does so in a bold rhythm; if the flashbacks accompanying the main narrative get muddy, this is a venal sin, easily expiated by the immersiveness of Whitehead's prose and the poetry of his foreshadowing. If the tone feels detached, our protagonist aloof, we do well to remember that this is the story of a broken man learning just how broken the world around him really is; a man who ... moreknows how to stash a go-bag. If we never precisely love 'Mark Spitz,' we like him well enough, and we'll follow his story to its end even though it's clear he's already shopping for the right moment to abandon us.
review 2: The New York Times said it best: "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star.... Granted the intellectual’s hit hanky-panky pay dirt, but what’s in it for the porn star? Conversation? Ideas? Deconstruction?"So, when a Pulitzer finalist decides to write a zombie novel, never the twain shall meet. It's somewhat satisfying from an "eat your vegetables" literary perspective, but for highbrow post-apocalyptic fiction, I'll take The Road, World War Z, The Passage, or just about anything else. less

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