Now, from one zombie story, too another, albeit one with a different agenda, and from a very unlikely source. Zone One is the first book I have read by Colson Whitehead, and being aware of what he has written before, I don’t think it would be right to judge him on this book alone. He is a black writer known for chronicling the black experience of the late twentieth century. He, like ZZ Packer, writes about black people who are more directly affected by the modern age than they are by the civil rights movement because they were born after it. I have not read any of those books, but I will give them a try. Now this zombie tale, taking place in Buffalo after the outbreak of zombies has been contained, follows Mark Spitz (not his real name) as he, along with a few other, go around cleaning the city, and searching for stragglers, which are zombies stuck doing things they used to do as living people. He recounts his job in monotonous detail, has interactions with bureaucrats he works for and loose cannons he works with and reflects on his relatively plain life before the night things went to hell. Eventually things begin to take a turn for the worse, and the peaceful containment is about to be no more. The real treat with this book is hearing about Mark’s past life, where he was always in the middle and happy to get by with little recognition or infamy, and how that contrasts with his important job after the zombie outbreak. It really shows the compassion he has not only for the characters, but also for the horror genre itself. But a lot of the time, I felt like I was reading a too well written zombie novel, with no real distinguishing factors besides its eloquent descriptions of violence. It was a bit of a let down having slept on it a few days, but check it out, especially during the Halloween season.
Rating: 4/5
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