We’re in interesting time in the genre universe. Mainstream writers are dropping in and writing genre books and some are even staying around and playing in the genre universe for awhile. The latest to jump in is Colson Whitehead with his post-apocalyptic zombie novel, Zone One. One of the advantages of literary writers playing in genre writing is that we can get more well-written genre books. The disadvantage is when they try to write it in a literary style that really doesn’t work well with the subject matter. Whitehead’s novel leans more to the disadvantage side. Let’s check it out to see what doesn’t work.
Mark Spitz is a mediocrity and that’s how he likes it. He’s the type of person who always sits just out of the teachers view. He doesn’t get deep into relationships, but he doesn’t avoid them either. He’s happy to live through life with a solid B. He’s not flunking, but not excelling either. And this knack for doing just enough has kept him alive through the zombie apocalypse. Mark Spitz isn’t his real name, it’s just the nickname that’s stuck with him (and it takes about 200 pages to get the story of the name).
In Buffalo is the new American government and they are looking at taking back Manhattan. They’ve sent in the armed forces to clean up the active zombies and put up barriers to hold the zombie free area safe. But, there are teams that have to clean up the stragglers. In a small percentage of zombies, they don’t go on a human munching rampage, but get stuck doing some routine task. Running the copy machine, fixing a broken machine, etc. Mark and his team are one of the civilian teams going through the area of Manhattan known as Zone One and doing a building by building search for these stragglers, killing them and dumping them out for another team to clean up. Things are looking up finally, maybe.
Between flashbacks to pre-apocalypse and flashbacks to how Mark made it to Zone One, we spend three days with Mark’s team going through the cleanup. And then everything goes wrong.
Overall, it’s a mediocre story. It’s well written and Mark Spitz is an interesting (and well-rounded) lead. But the story just rambles on, page after page. The book is only 250+ pages, but the story could have been told just as well in about 150 pages without losing any story, characterization or atmosphere. The book just rambles on and makes it hard to read. It’s a decent story and I would have liked to see it cleaned up and done better. It might just be me, but I had a hard time reading the story, even though I enjoyed it. Mildly recommended.