Zone One

A Novel

By: Colson Whitehead

Narrated by: Beresford Bennett

Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.

Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street - aka Zone One - but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety - the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.

Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work­ing in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world.

And then things start to go wrong.

Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One bril­liantly subverts the genre’s conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.

©2011 Colson Whitehead (P)2011 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"A satirist so playful that you often don't even feel his scalpel, Whitehead toys with the shards of contemporary culture with an infectious glee. Here he upends the tropes of the zombie story in the canyons of lower Manhattan. Horror has rarely been so unsettling, and never so grimly funny." ( The Daily Beast)

"Highbrow novelist Colson Whitehead plunges into the unstoppable zombie genre in this subtle meditation on loss and love in a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, which has become the city that never dies." ( USA Today)

"For-real literary - gory, lyrical, human, precise." ( GQ)

Slow

the book is not bad. the reader is unbearably slow. I listened at 1.5 speed at least throughout.

Zombie like pacing

First review for here but this book demands one. The story is told from current perspective with so many flashbacks and introspective moments that you lose the current story all together. I found myself fast forwarding to try and get to some current action but this book is too all over the place. The main story seems to take place over 3 days in the current time but jumps all over the timeline of the disaster told in a dreary PTSD filled monologue. Save your credits or money on this book and get something else .

I got this before there were reviews

Agreed with several other folks, it was really tough to get through this, in fact I couldn't finish it. The writing was very metaphor-filled and the jumping around in time was really tough to manage. I listen to audio books while driving and this one took a LOT of effort to follow, and at about the 3/4 point, I gave up. I didn't care about any of the characters and I didn't understand why so little was happening.

It was written, well in the sense that it was beautiful how he painted pictures of things, but it was tough to care.

Disappointed

I really wanted to like this book. Rarely have I struggled this much to get through an audio book. The story is all over the place and I found myself just not caring what happened to the characters as I never became invested. This author's style is just not for me, if you decide to buy this audio book don't listen while driving.

Will make you feel like the undead.

If you like alot (and I mean alot!) of good descriptive prose that makes a comment on the frivolity of modern society pointing out how we are all hopelessly doomed, and want a zombie twist on that, this may be the book for you. I like descriptive prose (even good descriptive prose) only if it flows naturally with the story and helps to move the plot along. If I find myself thinking "Boy.... that sure is ALOT of good descriptive prose." It's at that point my eyeballs roll back in my head and the zombie like moaning begins.

In Spite Of The Writing, Zombies Just Don't Cut It

Colson Whitehead is a great writer. His fabulous turns of phrase kept this snoozer alive. The issue is not with his craft. It's with his subject. Honestly, I don't get the current obsession with zombies. They're a pretty dull subject when you get down to it. We got the metaphors about "we are all zombies", spawned from a Walmart-based culture back in the late 70's when Romero created "Dawn of the Dead". There's not a lot more to say after that, and while Whitehead makes the same point with expert grace, it's still the same point.

For a much better listen, check out Whitehead's "The Intuitionist". This subject lives up to his great gifts as a writer. Zombies, not so much.

A novel or an SAT prep class?

Interesting story but the verbose, overdone, descriptions really made finishing this story HARD. By the time the author completes a sentence I have forgotten what it was about. I make it a point to always finish a book I pay for but I really regret picking this one.

Meh!

What disappointed you about Zone One?

Took to long to get to the good parts. Too much boring backstory.

Would you ever listen to anything by Colson Whitehead again?

Maybe.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He was bland.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Some good ideas.

Yeah, I get it, but...

Intriguing take on zombies and full of interesting ideas, but probably better for those that don't normally read horror and figure its all worthless pulp (which of course a good bit of it is). The idea of zombies as social commentary with a few laughs has been done before and better (Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" blows this into the weeds). And the idea of a "literary writer" tackling genre fiction is not necessarily new and can be excellent (Le Carre's spy novels or Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"), but sometimes it can be awkward (I'm thinking Martin Amis' ill-advised take on Elmore Leonard, "Night Train"). Still, I was game and stuck with it until the end.

I was able to get past the pacing, but ultimately I think this novel collapses under the weight of its language. There is too much unneeded description and clever turns of phrase and too it often drained scenes of their impact and at times seemed a bit too precious. I'm more than happy to work through pages of character development and back story, and make no mistake Mark Spitz is a great character, although I found the name distracting (I kept thinking why not Michael Phelps? - okay, I'm from Maryland, so shoot me), but I prefer not to be constantly reminded that I am reading "literature." This seems to be what ultimately makes the novel drag. Good writing is unobstrusive, not constantly in your face.

Ultimately a horror novel needs to scary. It can be an "idea" novel or satire or a comment on our decaying culture, but if you're going to have zombies (even ironic ones) and a zippy name like "Zone One," you better build some serious suspense and have some serious scares. In the end, while I applaud the effort, it just didn't do it for me.

I tried really hard

I went through five chapters of this, but just couldn’t get into it. I have enjoyed Colson Whitehead’s writing in the past (specifically, in "The Underground Railroad," but somehow this was just not engaging, for me.