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Zone One

by Colson Whitehead
Doubleday. Oct. 2011. c.272p. ISBN 9780385528078. $25.95. F
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The dead are stirring again! In the latest addition to the undead canon, a plague has decimated the earth and created hordes of suppurating, ravenous zombies. Zone One is Manhattan south of Canal Street, where the military has eradicated most of the dangerous zombies, but stragglers remain—lumbering living dead caught up in the mundane tasks of their former lives. Protagonist Mark Spitz is working with other volunteers to purge the stragglers from the city, and the narrative follows him over three harrowing days as he struggles with the aftereffects of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD), his own loneliness, and the end of the world as he knows it. Things can't possibly get worse. Then, of course, they do. VERDICT MacArthur fellow Whitehead, known for his literary paeans to New York city and environs (The Colossus of New York; Sag Harbor), has fashioned a relentlessly bleak and decaying Big Apple made palatable by his biting wit and dark humor. Both gruesome and intelligent, this satiric take on the postapocalyptic horror genre offers the most literary nod to zombie-ism since Mary Shelley. [Twelve-city tour; see Prepub Alert, 4/11/11.]—Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
The dead are stirring again! In the latest addition to the undead canon, a plague has decimated the earth and created hordes of suppurating, ravenous zombies. Zone One is Manhattan south of Canal Street, where the military has eradicated most of the dangerous zombies, but stragglers remain—lumbering living dead caught up in the mundane tasks of their former lives. Protagonist Mark Spitz is working with other volunteers to purge the stragglers from the city, and the narrative follows him over three harrowing days as he struggles with the aftereffects of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD), his own loneliness, and the end of the world as he knows it. Things can't possibly get worse. Then, of course, they do.
VERDICT MacArthur fellow Whitehead, known for his literary paeans to New York city and environs (The Colossus of New York; Sag Harbor), has fashioned a relentlessly bleak and decaying Big Apple made palatable by his biting wit and dark humor. Both gruesome and intelligent, this satiric take on the postapocalyptic horror genre offers the most literary nod to zombie-ism since Mary Shelley. [Twelve-city tour; see Prepub Alert, 4/11/11.]—Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
Reviewed by Jeanne Bogino , Aug 01, 2011
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