Zone
One: A Novel
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by Colson Whitehead
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (October 18, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385528078
ISBN-13: 978-0385528078
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
Book Reviewed by Robert Fleming
As one of the finest word craftsmen of his generation, Colson Whitehead has
shown a high degree of imaginative skill and creativity, turning each genre
inside out to meet his purposes. He never writes the same book over, improvising
and tinkering within the boundaries of each fictional setting like a master jazz
musician.
A MacArthur Fellow, Whitehead, a literary novelist with acclaimed six books to
his credit, tackles the horror realm and the popular zombie fad with his latest
book, Zone One. Influenced by horror wizards George Romero, Max Brooks, Stephen
King, and David Wellington, the novel features Mark Spitz, an ordinary bloke who
has survived the deadly "Last Night" event that has transformed the world
population into a legion of walking dead, dodging chaos. The zombies or skels, a
term often used by cops to describe perps, have overrun the earth with their bad
flesh-devouring appetites and unruly behavior.
Spitz, still in shock from watching his mother make a snack of his father, has
joined with a squad of survivors to sweep the zombies from Manhattan. Suffering
from PASD (post apocalyptic stress disorder) the group takes orders from
Buffalo, the provisional capital, teaming with the military to maintain a
livable zone south of Canal Street. Horror fans will love the occasional carnage
and mayhem as the still intact survivors confront the ravenous undead.
While the Whitehead novel echoes the Romero zombie scenario, with lots of blood
and gore, the author cannot fully escape his egghead roots, often having fun
with the readers with his potent dark sardonic humor and satirical word play.
Some people will be turned off by this. I love it. Others will complain that
there is no linear plot in this combo plate of terrifying bloody
nibbles-and-bits, but they are wrong. Everything doesn't have to conform or
connected by dots.
Peel back the veneer of this standard tale of reactivated cadavers and there is
something more. Whitehead writes: "There was a single Us now, reviling a single
Them. Would the old bigotries be reborn as well, when they cleared out this
Zone, and the next, and so on, and they were packed together again, tight and
suffocating on top of each other? Or was that particular bramble of animosities,
fears, and envies impossible to recreate?...There were plenty of things in the
world that deserved to stay dead, yet they walked."
A literary chameleon, Whitehead uses the interaction of Spitz, Kaitlyn and Gary,
the sweeper team, and the brutal military, and the raw clashes with the skels to
mirror our limping American culture, the cruelty and banality of urban society,
and the creeping emptiness of human life. Many critics proclaim the African
American novel is dead, but that is far from the case. There are many things to
enjoy in this novel. It rates as one of Mr. Whitehead's most satisfying visions.
Read this one with an open mind and then go back and rediscover the other
Whitehead gems such as The Intuitionist, John Henry Days and Apex Hides The
Heart.
Related Links
Read an Excerpt from
Zone One