I just totally lost interest in the story, and it actually became painful to read on. I must admit I had more difficulty finishing this novel than any other I’ve completed this year. Reading the novel became somewhat of a long slog for me. Also the language used for these flashbacks is convoluted and not at all direct.

Many, many characters are introduced during these flashbacks who really have nothing to do with the main plot. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilisation under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. What kills the novel are the interminable flashbacks. English 259 pages 24 cm A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Whitehead has a lot of fun both making ironic commentary on the upper class life style in New York City now turned into zombie land and also deriding Connecticut. Finally there is their yuppie leader Kaitlyn who brings some much-needed professionalism to their straggler disposal unit.Īs long as the novel is in the Here and Now with our three well-defined characters decapitating zombies, the novel works to some extent. There is the main character Mark Spitz who is “the most likely not to be named the most likely anything.” There is Gary who brings an extra enthusiastic elan to zombie defacing and beheading. There are three well-defined characters in “Zone One”. I did figure if anyone could make a zombie novel come alive, it would be Whitehead. Zombies or fighting zombies has never been one of my main areas of interest, although it has been fun to see those out for the annual Zombie Pub Crawl in Minneapolis. Colson Whitehead established himself, in my mind, as one of the finest novelists around with his first two books, “The Intuitionist” and “John Henry Days”. I remember thinking, “If I ever, ever were to read a zombie novel, it would have to be by Colson Whitehead.” Well here it is, “Zone One”.

Zone one book review