In Zone One, Colson Whitehead has taken a usually mindless
genre and turned it into a literary exercise.
To call this book a zombie novel wouldn’t be fair to those who read
zombie fiction or those who try to avoid it.
You won’t find the usual gore and suspense that the typical genre fare
holds. What you will find is wonderfully
writer prose and a valiant effort to use the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor
for the state the current population is under.
I know, I know, that’s the metaphor almost every zombie story tries to
make, but Whitehead does it by studying the characters instead of through
zombie attacks. Although those
characters sometimes boarder on cliché, there is plenty to take from the world
that Whitehead has created.
I’m not sure that Zone
One reaches the heights it’s intended too, but it is an enjoyable read. The world Whitehead has created is stark and
filled with poignant stories, even though it lacks any suspense or intense
action. The prose is what keeps the
novel ahead of its zombie genre brethren.
The vocabulary is beautiful and the pacing poetic. It’s not the best zombie novel I’ve read, but
an enjoyable read none the less.
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